


serendipity

by goddcoward



Series: i hate you, i love you (i hate that i love you) [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Falling In Love, M/M, MadaTobi Week 2019, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Politics, Warring States Period (Naruto)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2020-05-13 21:30:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19259536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/pseuds/goddcoward
Summary: ser·en·dip·i·ty/ˌserənˈdipədē/nounthe occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way."a fortunate stroke of serendipity"synonyms:chance, happy chance, accident, happy accident, flukeIn a different world, there is no accident, no unlikely but perfectly timed cataclysm of events that leads to Tobirama's outing as an omega.In a different world, it does happen, and arguably, his life is perfect: he is the first omega to become a Kage, the first omega to lead the Senju Clan, the first omega to be established as one of the Founders of a Hidden Village.(It is so empty, and for all his famous genius, he never figures outwhy.)In this world, the first person outside of the Senju to learn his deepest, darkest secret is Uchiha Madara, and it changes, well,everything.--NOTICE: the update is not the most recent chapter. chapter 10 is what's new. thank you for understanding that i am a mess with no comprehension of being loyal to chronological order or reason





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO ALL it's me, cat, back with yet another clown ass fic this time featuring abo! this was gonna b for madatobi week but i decided that if i had to go another damn day w/o posting a new wip especially one that's been chewing on my ass like this one has i'd literally explode SO. here we are
> 
> huge thanks to merry for beta-reading this and also for being a wonderful human who tolerates my nonstop nonsense like a true champion. merry i love you and if you're reading this,,,,, you deserve for good things to happen to you
> 
> just a note before we begin: on biology.
> 
> most a/b/o aus have genitals that drive me fucking insane, so in this 'verse both male omegas and female alphas are hermaphroditic, meaning that they have both sets of parts and that both function properly, although it's considerably more difficult for f/alphas to bear children and for m/omegas to sire them. mito is an uzumaki and the uzumaki are perpetual outliers, so she can carry hashirama's babies like the queen she is, but beyond that these rules apply.
> 
> ergo, tobirama has both a penis and a vagina (but no testicles - semen is stored internally and there is a lot less of it), and whatever children he has will not come out of his ass because asses don't recover from shitting out a whole entire baby
> 
> ANYWAY now that that's over with......here it is!! i hope yall enjoy because i'm working really hard on this and the first chapter is not nearly as exciting as the rest of it, i promise!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's just a flashback and i might delete it but it's here for now!
> 
> if you've read under the sun you'll remember tsukike and sakuma, tobirama's moms in this verse. they're the reason he's not already married to mito and pregnant with her babies bc w/o their intervention that's how the uzumaki-senju peace treaty would have gone

_He’s four years old when he’s engaged to Uzumaki Mito, the alpha heiress of the island of Uzushio._

_“Butsuma! What have you **done** with him!” Mama shrieks, sounding not unlike a hawk as she cradles Tobirama to her chest, tucking his head against the swell of her breasts and placing her hand firmly on the nape of his neck as if to force him closer to her. All around her, her cold-flame-summer-snow chakra thrashes and heaves. It’s raw, untrained, unrefined – even before Mama became a Senju, she was never a warrior – but its sheer strength still overwhelms his delicate constitution, and he buries his face into her skin with a whimper. All the angry-chakra radiating from the adults in the room is giving him a headache, but he can’t say that, can’t express weakness unless he wants to be punished for cursing his Clan with his existence. He gets headaches a lot. No one knows._

_“Uzumaki Akira accepted the marriage proposal,” Father says stiffly from above where Mama and Tobirama are curled up in a corner. “As soon as he passes his first heat, he’ll go to the island and marry her daughter and mate her and bear her children, and we’ll have an alliance with the sealing masters to show for it. Stop your fucking crying, Tsukike, he’s just an omega, and fūinjutsu could win the war for us.”_

_Kaa-chan cries out loud, clinging to Father’s arm and sinking to his knees in despair. “Not Tobira-chan, alpha, please, not him,” he pleads, big brown eyes full of tears. “Butsuma, please, I promise you he’s more valuable with us.”_

_“More **valuable?** Every moment that he remains in this compound is a risk, just asking for bloodline thieves to kidnap him and rape him and use him to produce children with the Mokuton—”_

_Mama makes a distraught noise and clutches Tobirama closer. It’s getting hard to breathe, and even though her terrified-angry chakra makes him nauseous, it’s still Mama’s, still soothing. It’s been cradling him since before he can remember._

_“Butsuma, he’s **four** -!”_

_“And he won’t stay four forever! It’s really for the best that we get rid of him now. Perhaps I can arrange an early engagement that will mean he’s obligated to go to Uzushio once the contract is signed.”_

_“Alpha, please—”_

_“Let me **go,** Sakuma. There’s work to be done. If you want to spend time with the brat, you might as well do it while you can. If all goes well, he’ll be leaving for the island in a month.”_

_Mama sobs, wet and broken, making a noise like a dying animal and smothering Tobirama with the strength of her hug. “No, no, not my baby, not Tobira-chan, alpha, alpha, you **can’t** —”_

_“I can do what I want with him. Do you remember? I let him live on the condition that I could, and now I’ve found a use for him. If you want to go back on that promise, he can die now. It’s no hardship.”_

_Kaa-chan screams, and through the thick white curtain of Mama’s hair Tobirama thinks he sees him scrabbling on the floor, climbing to his knees and hurling himself at Father. “Anything, anything, **anything** but sending him away, let him become a shinobi, train him to be a ninja, but please don’t force him to be an omega, Butsuma, **please**!”_

_Mama rocks back and forth, insensate in her despair, but her hold is warm and welcome, and Tobirama snuggles farther into it, clasping small hands over his ears as if that will block out the thrashing of his parents’ chakra. It doesn’t help, but it makes him feel secure, so he doesn’t stop._

_He doesn’t know what Uzushio is, doesn’t know what an Uzumaki is, doesn’t know anything but how much he loves his mama and his kaa-chan and his anija, and he doesn’t want to leave them._

_He thinks he’d rather die._

_Father is silent and still and cold, his chakra going from raging-frustration to cool-calculation in between one moment and the next._

_Mama doesn’t look up. Her tears wet the top of Tobirama’s head, the soft sounds of her crying the only small noises she makes._

_He thinks that she should never have to cry, never have to be sad, and suddenly, irrationally, he **hates** Father, hates what he’s done to Mama and Kaa-chan, hates the idea of making them so utterly miserable and broken without even caring, hates him for considering Tobirama a trash child for his dynamic and his albinism, hates him hates him **hates him** —_

_“…Bring him to the medics,” Father says after a long pause where the only sounds are Mama’s sobs and Kaa-chan’s heavy, wet breathing. “Have him examined. If he’s healthy and fertile, he goes.”_

_Mama’s arms go tight around his body like a vice and she **wails,** her voice pitching high and distraught. “No, no, **no,** you can’t take him from me!”_

_“Step **aside,** woman, and hand him over. Sakuma is going to take him to the iryō building and have him examined, aren’t you, Sakuma?” Father’s voice is velvety and heavy with the underlying cadence of something malicious, and Kaa-chan is brave, but he’s also meek and hurt and aching on the inside, a pacifist to put even Anija to shame, and the quiet sound of his assent triggers some feral instinct in Mama._

_She sweeps out of the bedroom with Tobirama still clinging to her shoulders, chakra building in an intense tidal wave of sheer, unadulterated outrage, and now **he** wants to cry but he’s not allowed to because even though he’s a boy, he’s an omega, an albino, worthless for everything. _

_…Everything but breeding._

_Tobirama doesn’t know what that is, has only heard it from his parents when they argued about sending him off to the Mito heiress, but he’s scared of it, doesn’t want it, doesn’t want to get married or be someone’s mate or have babies. He’s barely a baby himself!_

_“Tobira-chan,” Mama murmurs to him, something ferrous and unbreakable in her voice where before there was only gut-wrenching sorrow, “we’re going to take you to Baa-chan, and she’s going to say that you’re a strong, good little boy, that you have a potent chakra and lots of potential, and then you can be a shinobi, just like Hashirama-kun and Tōka-chan. Would you like that?”_

_“I don’t know,” Tobirama says, his voice very small. He just knows what he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want to do breeding, doesn’t want to leave the only home he’s ever known, doesn’t want his mothers to have to suffer heartbreak because the only thing he’s good for is letting them down._

_“Don’t you worry, baby. You’re going to be able to defend yourself, and then no one will hurt you, not even Butsuma, not even alphas. I – Sakuma and I can’t be like that, but there’s hope for **you,** little one, and I won’t let him give up on that because he doesn’t want to acknowledge it.”_

_Baa-chan takes one look at them and ushers them into her examination room, Mama whispering a litany of thanks over and over and over as she locks the door behind him and activates the rudimentary privacy seals set into the walls._

_“Don’t know what’s gotten into that boy’s head, just sending away Tobirama-kun,” she says roughly, prying him from Mama’s arms and setting him gently down on her observation table. “Just tossing away a child with his power, with his range? When’s the last time a sensor of his caliber was born to the Senju? Bah. Useless son. I apologize, Tsukike-san, he has too much of his father in him.”_

_Mama goes very suddenly still, and at the core of her energy there’s something like hope. “…Did you say that he’s a **sensor**?”_

_“Is it not obvious? Look at the way he responds to the chakra around him. He tries to hide it but he’s so sensitive to energy that it gives him headaches on the bad days, migraines on the worse days. With some training and refining I have no doubt that he could easily become the strongest sensor in Fire Country.”_

_“I – Tobira-chan, wait with your baa-chan, I have to go very quickly but I promise I’ll be back, baby.”_

_Mama vanishes, running back towards the main house like she’s being chased by an Uchiha, her long hair flying in the wind, her chakra brighter than it has been in months._

_“You knew Sakuma was pregnant before he did, didn’t you, child,” Baa-chan asks him, and Tobirama nods silently, because he could sense his sibling in Kaa-chan’s tummy well before he announced that they would be having another baby. “Gods. Butsuma really doesn’t know what’s right in front of his face, does he? Don’t you listen to that man, Tobirama-kun. Don’t you let him make you afraid of him.”_

_“Yes, Baa-chan,” Tobirama says, remembering suddenly that his grandmother is one of the few trained sensors that the Senju have to their name, and that she’s an omega, and that before she was a healer, before she was the Clan Head’s mate, she was a kunoichi._

_“Baa-chan?”_

_“Yes, Tobirama-kun?”_

_“Will you teach me how to sense?”_

_The old woman turns to him with a gleam in her dark eyes, gray-brown braids falling across her shoulders as she leans down to eye level with him. “I can’t right now, child, but as soon as your mothers convince that boy of mine to let you become a shinobi? I’ll tell you everything I know.”_

_Tobirama’s eyes go very big, because Baa-chan knows so many things, even how to save lives, and if he can do that too-! If he can do that too, he can be useful!_

_“Even healing?”_

_“I don’t know if you have the chakra control for it, and to be frank, I don’t want to teach you to be an iryō-nin.”_

_“Why not? Won’t it make me useful?”_

_“Yes, but it will trap you in the compound, keep you bottled up and kept safe for the rest of your life, and that’s not what you want, is it, Tobirama-kun?”_

_“No, Baa-chan.”_

_“There’s a boy. Sit and wait there, there’s something I need to find for you…”_

_The next day, Father wakes him in the darkness, well before the sun comes up, not shaking his shoulder like he does to rouse Hashirama for their training sessions, but spiking his chakra, the shift in energy immediately startling him awake._

_“I’ll be damned,” he says, gruff. “It’s true, isn’t it?”_

_“What’s true, Father?”_

_“Nothing. You come with me now, boy, and if you so much as think about complaining even once, I’ll send you off to Uzushio, damn your potential, damn your fucking sensing. You know how to hold a kunai?”_

_“…I’ve been practicing.”_

_That earns him a surprised glare, but for the first time, Father’s attention doesn’t feel inherently angry or disappointed. For the first time, there is something like pride in the edges of the shock on his face, something like pleasure in the fluctuations of his chakra._

_That day Tobirama trains until he collapses, memorizing hand seals he’d begun teaching himself, learning how to hold a shuriken without slicing his hand open, learning how to go for the knees when attacking shinobi larger than him, learning to never, ever, ever look an opponent in the eyes._

_Hashirama has to help carry him back to bed, and it’s the best sleep he has in months._

_The next day they do it again, and again, and again, until Tobirama has mastered the basic basics of being a ninja in under a month, until it’s time for him to start learning real ninjutsu, real taijutsu, real kenjutsu. Every spare moment he has – not that there are all that many – he spends with Mama and Kaa-chan and baby Kawarama, helping watch the new pup and reading voraciously until his eyes hurt and the kanji slide into each other. Another month passes, then two, then three, then a year, and then Itama is born. Time blurs together until Tobirama is a fully grown, blooded shinobi at six years old._

_It makes Hashirama cry, but he looks at Father, senses that same pride in his glare when he watches Tobirama disarm opponents thrice his age and size, and it’s worth it._

_He’s seven years old when Uzumaki Mito is engaged to his anija, the heir of their Clan, the Senju, the sole possessor of the fabled Mokuton._

_He’s eight when Kawarama is killed. He’s twelve when Itama joins him in the pure lands, thirteen when The Nakano Incident occurs, fifteen when Father dies under suspect circumstances._

_He’s twenty-two when it all falls apart._


	2. TOBIRAMA I

Red, white, black, silver, red. The colors turn in a circle of flashing fins and glimmering scales, swirling in idle patterns beneath the surface of the water, vibrant and vivid against the bright green backdrop of the aquatic garden. The butterfly koi coil and wind around themselves, swimming around their wide, deep pond with a kind of languid serenity that Tobirama feels is the very essence of what Water chakra should strive to be. He copies their movements in his katas, flowing from one stance to the next with the slow surety he’s learned from his fish, dancing through his exercises. It’s imperative that he maintains his concentration as he goes. He first learned to water-walk when he was four, only a few years after mastering regular walking, and although it comes easier to him than almost anything else, it wouldn’t do to allow his iron-strong concentration to bend.

If he allows his hormones to take him over, he’ll fall, and then the act will be ruined. Under no circumstances can Tobirama succumb to his heat before the dance is finished; Minamoto Daisuke paid for a show, and so he will receive one.

Tobirama pictures music, typhoon winds, the crash and splash of ocean waves as he goes, focusing so thoroughly on the rhythm of his body and his movements that even his omnipotent chakra-sense falls to the side. He can feel his heart pounding in tempo with the rushing thunder of the waterfall that feeds the pond, can feel his blood rush through his veins, tempered by the heavy flood of Water chakra that resides within him, perfectly slow and perfectly fast all at once. He ignores the slick dripping down his thighs, ignores the sensation of fire ants crawling beneath his skin, ignores his weeping erection. He must maintain complete and total control over his body and his urges, and so he does, for there is simply no other option. He pours himself through the familiar movements; simultaneously fast and slow, balanced, flawless.

Tobirama has been water-dancing since he was just a pup, and his endless hours of devotion to the art shine through his every fluid movement; he feels in the moment that he transcends the capabilities of the human body, that the swirling, winding, artful courtship display of the fish beneath his bare feet has become his own.

Just as Tobirama thinks he’ll waver and trip, Minamoto claps his hands, satisfied.

“Beautifully done, Tobi-chan,” he calls, predatory smile lighting up his face when he sees him collapse gracefully into seiza at the finish of his dance. “Lovely, lovely, lovely. Certainly worth the pretty price I paid for you, hmm, my darling? Come now, come on over here. I’m getting tired of watching you when I could be fucking you.”

He can hear the curiosity in the young lord’s voice, but he doesn’t reveal the truths behind his water-walking. Anija will be displeased enough that he took on this mission despite explicit orders forbidding him from doing so without him sharing Senju secrets, even to one person, even to a dead man.

Instead, he smiles prettily, hiding his teeth behind painted red lips and stepping down from the koi pond. He sheds his thin kimono as he goes, making sure to put an extra sway in his steps, although he doesn’t need to. He’s spent enough time ignoring his rampaging impulses that the walls swim in his vision and the floor warps and melts beneath his feet; he doesn’t have to affect the signs of heat-sickness, because it’s genuine.

He’s really in heat, and he’s really about to let the Shogun’s eldest son fuck him.

For the Senju, Tobirama reminds himself as he arranges himself artfully on the grand, Western-style bed. For the Senju and for the sake of three million ryō, he can survive half a night of bad sex to trick Minamoto into complacency, and then he doesn’t have to waste any more time on the man. Simply storing the body in a sealing scroll will suffice as proof for the client, and once it’s all over less than twenty-four hours from now, he’ll be free to leave, to ride out the rest of his heat in some well-protected cave or tree-hollow, and then it’ll be off to home, back to Anija and Mito and Tōka and the punishment that will undoubtedly await him when Hashirama finds out that he disobeyed a direct order and put himself in such unbelievable danger, all for a single mission.

Less than a day and it will be finished.

Tobirama parts his thighs, giving Minamoto a good view of his heat-slick cunt and sensitive erection, and the alpha smiles, an animal on the hunt. He stalks closer like a shark that’s scented blood, half-drunk on Tobirama’s heat pheromones and already dropping his defenses. A few rounds should be enough to purge his slow little mind of all suspicion, and to throw the guards off his trail. A few rounds should be enough, if that, and then he’ll be entirely in Tobirama’s grasp. 

Minamoto’s hands slide down his thighs, tracing along the intricate crimson lines of his tattoos, and he visualizes the kill. He’ll get them into a position where they’re chest to chest, almost embracing each other, and then he’ll slide his hands up Minamoto’s neck and shoulders, as though admiring the strength of his deltoids, and then –  _ snap. _ Maybe he’ll use a Suiton jutsu and drown him in the water from the koi pond. Maybe he’ll simply use his bare teeth to rip out his throat. Tobirama has made an art of assassination missions, and he’s not about to disappoint himself by getting sloppy, even in his heat. It’s still early enough that he’ll maintain lucidity for the next couple of hours, which should provide him with enough time to ride Minamoto out, kill him, and then retreat to a safe shelter where he can stick up the scent-seals he brought with him and endure the next couple of days as well as he can.

“Sage, Tobi-chan,” Minamoto half-pants into his ear, “has anyone ever told you that you’re  _ gorgeous? _ I’ve never met an omega like you.”

“You never will again,” he promises, velvety and coy, and is rewarded for his mouthiness with a roll of rich, rumbling laughter that vibrates against his body, sending barely perceptible shockwaves riding through his body and making him wriggle involuntarily as Minamoto’s rut-scent grows heavy and musky with lust.

He’s a civilian, and it’s easy enough for Tobirama to flip them, to put himself on top and settle down onto the vee of his hips, grinding his ass back into his growing erection. Minamoto doesn’t seem to enjoy being on his back, but he sees the way a naked omega is going for his pants, and he permits things to proceed as they are.

Perhaps he’s smarter than he looks. Tobirama will not bend over for any alpha who hasn’t rightfully won his submission, and this one certainly doesn’t reach his standards. It goes against every one of his instincts to permit a man weaker than him to enter him.

A single night of sex won’t kill him, and he’s already getting hotter and hotter. He needs it, or the urges will only get worse. He needs it, and he’s never going to get a better opportunity than he has now – there’s no risk that his true dynamic will be exposed to the world, after all, if the only outsider aware of it is dead. He’s never had sex before, never having had the chance; he doesn’t know what expectations he should or shouldn’t have

Hot, sweaty hands settle on his hips, gripping hard enough to leave bruises behind on his delicate skin. Tobirama hisses in displeasure, not wanting this subpar alpha to leave any marks on him, but Minamoto ignores him, hungry eyes tracking down his neck and chest to his exposed sex. Fingers drop from his pelvis to the base of his cock, poking and prodding at everything around it, like he’s never seen the genitals of a male omega before.

“Everything’s there,” Tobirama says crossly, nearly choking on a sharp intake of breath as the hands move to caress the slick folds of his cunt. “If –  _ ah _ \- if you’re so  _ curious _ about it, you’re welcome to  _ get on with it _ and fuck me already.”

“Impatient little bitch, aren’t you,” Minamoto replies, voice warm with an amusement that makes Tobirama flush in anger. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll get there. Just had to make sure you’re all in working order, yes?”

He’s about to protest the demeaning words, but then, in a single abrupt movement, the alpha enters him.

Heat burns beneath his skin like his veins have been filled with liquid fire, and though the stretch is uncomfortable – too much too fast, and not particularly well done – he can’t repress a moan, because even the awkward pain of being filled before he’s ready sends sparks of pleasure lancing through his body. His hormones are burning high and bright at the moment, it would seem, because Tobirama opens his eyes to see Minamoto, arguably one of the most mediocre alphas he’s ever met, and he almost begins to salivate.

The wonders of the estrous cycle never cease to amaze.

A few moments pass where the two of them just sit there in limbo, Tobirama perched on Minamoto’s lap, filled to the brim and panting like a dog, and Minamoto beneath him, sheathed to the hilt and already glassy-eyed from the omega heat pheromones polluting the air.

A head comes to rest against his shoulder, and a voice whispers in his ear. “Fucking  _ Sage, _ Tobi-chan, you feel so  _ good. _ It’s like you were made to take my cock. Were you, baby? Is this why the gods put you on this earth? So that I can fuck you in every hole you’ve got, you pretty thing?”

“Uh-huh,” Tobirama whimpers, because the words are too soft and indistinct for his pleasure-scrambled brain to identify them, and because he’d probably agree to anything if it got the alpha to  _ move. _ “It feels – it feels good, Minamoto-sama.”

Lips twitch into a smile against his deltoids, and a second later, the head lifts up so that teeth can sink in, not quite at the site of Tobirama’s scent-glands but so close that the overture is impossible to miss, even for him.

His blood runs cold, and some of the fog clears from his brain, because that – that was—

“Tobi-chan,” the lord croons, “would you like to be my bitch?”

Mating bonds are no trivial thing. A monogamous, devoted connection between two people that cannot be broken for years if not decades is no trivial thing, and Minamoto –  _ Minamoto wants to mate him. _

Just as Tobirama opens his mouth to say no, the doors explode open, a young woman skittering through with a litany of apologies as she rushes to fall into a formal seiza before her lord.

Tobirama can’t see her from where he’s speared on Minamoto’s cock, but he thanks every god he knows of for her presence. The longer she stays, the longer he can dodge the mating question and figure out how to come up with an appropriate way to decline that kind of request without offending the alpha in question, especially considering that he’s in rut.

He’s in rut, and he’s known Tobirama for all of four hours. Either he’s always this quick to claim or Tobi-chan is just very,  _ very _ charming, and he can’t quite tell which one is worse.

Minamoto snarls at the servant girl, arms wrapping tight and protective around Tobirama’s smooth, muscled back. “What are you doing, girl, can’t you tell that I’m  _ busy? _ I gave  _ specific orders _ not to be disturbed for any reason except—”

“His lordship has arrived,” she blurts out, and Tobirama stares awkwardly at the wall, wondering how he’s going to pretend to be flattered by such an unbelievable offer. “He’s – uh, he’s rather impatient, Minamoto-sama, and I just thought that you should know that he’s waiting for your permission to come in. My lord.”

“He can  _ wait,” _ Minamoto snaps. “I’m rather  _ indisposed _ right now, you stupid girl, and I’m not beholden to anyone but Father. If he’s displeased and impatient, let him be displeased and impatient, damn it.”

“I - yes, Minamoto-sama.”

With that, her footsteps recede rapidly, followed by the slamming sound of the doors closing, and briefly Tobirama mourns her company, if only because it means that Minamoto’s attention is now focused solely on him once more.

“I’m sorry about the interruption, Tobi-chan,” he murmurs, bringing one hand up to card through his short white hair and slipping the other down to palm at his ass. “I’m entering a time of vulnerability, you see, politically speaking, and I’ve had to hire a new guardsman for the whole affair. Rather ornery, if you ask me, and inordinately expensive, but that’s neither here nor there, is it, my sweet? We were talking about  _ us. _ What do you say?”

The hand in his hair drops down to press strong, bruising fingers against the exposed patches of skin on either side of his neck that conceal his scent-glands beneath them. Tobirama can’t repress a keen – aside from his nipples and his sex, that’s the most sensitive part of his body, and he can’t keep himself from tipping forward to rest against the pillar of Minamoto’s body.

…He’s surprisingly well-built for a civilian.

“Do you want a life with me, Tobi-chan? You’d be my concubine, of course, not my husband, seeing as you’re a courtesan and all, but that still leaves us plenty of room to have as many children as we want and be a big, happy family. You’d make the most beautiful babies, you gorgeous thing, and I can’t  _ wait _ to put my seed here.”

The hand on his ass moves to caress the flat planes of his stomach, and Tobirama shudders in horror at the thought of being trapped, mated to some greasy civilian lord and forced to bear his pups, well-muscled or not; there’s been no marriage hunt, no proper mating ceremony, and the omega in him balks at the idea of submitting permanently to Minamoto, who is so far beneath him in terms of strength and ability that the mere suggestion is almost  _ laughable. _

Unfortunately, his heat-glazed brain is not remotely as articulate as his regular genius-brain, so what comes out in response is not polite or well-intentioned so much as it is a blatant, unrepentant  _ fuck you _ to all the hard work he’s done to put Minamoto in a good, pliant mood.

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I just – really don’t want to, is all.”

Minamoto goes still and hard beneath him, slipping out of his cunt with an obscene, wet squelching noise and shifting him around so that his hands can span the circumference of his slender waist, leaving them face-to-face and rather closer together than Tobirama would like them to be.

“You say  _ no, _ Tobi-chan? You  _ don’t want to?” _

Tobirama can hear the anger there, palpable and toxic and growing, and he squeezes his eyes shut before choosing to die on the hill he’s selected.

“I say no, Minamoto-sama. I don’t want to be mated…”

The  _ and certainly not to  _ **_you_ ** isn’t said aloud, but it would seem that the lord hears it anyway, because suddenly his grip is strangling-tight and Tobirama has to gasp for breath, trying to wiggle out of his grasp while still weak and clumsy from his heat.

He scrambles backwards on the bed, kicking Minamoto away from him and staring with wide eyes as the man’s face darkens into a stormy purple color. Minamoto bares his teeth, alpha canines descending, gleaming sharp and threatening in the low lamplight.

He’s – he’s not safe here. He needs to leave, he needs to get  _ out, _ but there’s an angry alpha and he wants Tobi-chan so  _ much  _ and Tobirama’s so aroused that it’s physically painful. He needs an orgasm or his heat will continue to build until he can’t do anything but writhe in his helplessness. Minamoto wants his Tobi-chan to stay, wants him to stay  _ forever, _ if he has any say in it, and it’s not like Tobirama hasn’t had to endure worse before. He’s a blooded shinobi and a feared warrior and a Clan heir, and he can take whatever Minamoto Daisuke thinks he has to give and return it twofold.

Tobirama’s on his back, propped up on his elbows with his legs stretched out, and he spreads them purposefully, slowly. A taunt, an invitation, a dare; Minamoto takes the bait, and with a feral smile he slots himself into the newly created space between Tobirama’s thighs. This new position puts Minamoto’s face near his chest but not so high up that his mouth can reach his neck and the scent-glands there, and without Tobirama’s permission, he won’t be getting any closer, although he doesn’t seem to realize it. 

Poor man. It must be a burden, being so stunningly stupid that he fails to recognize an assassination attempt if it’s laying between the legs of a pretty bitch.

Minamoto thrusts into him suddenly, roughly, with an animalistic growl and two hands pinning him back to the bed. The stretch hurts, burning, but the pleasure eclipses it, and Tobirama puts on a show of moaning wantonly like the whore the alpha seems to think he is.

“Oh –  _ ah _ – right there, Minamoto-sama—”

“You think,” Minamoto snarls above him, “that  _ you _ get to tell  _ me _ what to do? You’re a glorified slut, Tobi-chan, and don’t you forget your position:  _ beneath _ me. This is where you are, this is where you were always supposed to be, this is where you’ll always be from now on, if I have any say in it.”

It doesn’t take much longer for him to build up a truly brutal pace, hammering into Tobirama and probably bruising his cervix with the force of his entry, and from there the heat only pools in his belly until it becomes nigh unbearable. It’s embarrassing, getting off to an alpha degrading him and fucking him hatefully, but he’s getting further and further into his heat cycle, and his lucidity is slipping away from him like so much water in between his fingers. If it’s even remotely erotic, Tobirama’s sex-crazed brain will find a way to draw an orgasm from it, and oh,  _ fuck, _ there – there – it’s too  _ much _ but so  _ good _ —

He comes with an explosion of white light behind his eyelids and a scream ripping out of his throat, pleasure searing along his every nerve with such intensity that he forgets Minamoto is there for half a moment.

It’s the first mistake he makes, the first domino that falls, and it nearly ruins everything.

Minamoto’s hands press him back into the covers, and dazed as he is from the mind-shattering intensity of his first time, Tobirama does not notice his open mouth and unsheathed fangs until they’re already sinking into the side of his neck, puncturing the skin and exposing his virginal scent-glands to the pheromones of another.

The fact that he was bitten only sinks in as lazy streams of blood drip sluggishly down his throat.

It’s a strange numbness that overcomes him, then, as Minamoto coos in victory and shoves his engorged knot up into Tobirama’s cunt, tying them together. Distantly, he realizes that he failed to protect himself, that he was just mated, just bonded to a  _ civilian, _ but the shock doesn’t settle in.

When he realizes, there is only rage, blood-red and all-consuming and so potent that it overcomes the cresting waves of heat that overwhelm Tobirama’s mind. There is only anger, only insult, only  _ how-dare-you _ and killing intent.

There is only one thing to do, of course.

The job must be completed, and the debt must be repaid.

Tobirama surges up like a tidal wave, surprising Minamoto into reeling back with a splutter. He slams their heads together with a hollow knocking sound - does the man not have  _ anything _ inside his skull? - and topples them together so that Tobirama is on top once more, still stuck on Minamoto’s cock with that infernal knot lodged inside of him.

Between one moment and the next, in the blink of an eye, before Minamoto can even think to call for the guards that are no doubt stationed somewhere nearby, protecting their precious heir, Tobirama leans down and  _ bites, _ bites until the wet gurgle of arterial blood fills his ears, bites until copper-salt-stickiness floods his mouth, bites until the body beneath him stops writhing in agony and goes finally, blessedly still.

Next comes the second mistake. In heat, Tobirama’s legendary chakra control wavers and becomes erratic; his ability to perform complicated jutsus and activate advanced seals almost vanishes altogether due to the unpredictability of his body’s chakra coils under the influence of such an intense outpour of hormones, and the fact that he was able to pull off his water-dance at all remains a minor miracle.

This is important. It means that his sensor’s sight is clouded over, shadowed by the intensity of the semi-permanent arousal he’s subjected to when in heat. It means that he is not watching his surroundings with his sixth sense, not casting out his awareness to check for threats and potential obstructions.

It means that his teeth are still lodged in Minamoto’s throat when the doors slam open and a new alpha charges in, smelling of sunlight and woodsmoke and the metallic steam of natural hot springs, smelling like molten metal and burning plant matter and newborn stars, smelling like the best damn thing that Tobirama’s nose has ever known.

It means that he’s still tied to Minamoto when he looks up for the source of the magical scent to recognize, of all people,  _ Uchiha Madara. _

He shares a few seconds of exceedingly awkward eye contact with the Uchiha Clan Head before he comes back to himself and realizes just what kind of incredible danger he’s in. The man himself shouts something out, probably an insult, but Tobirama, in his panic, does not hear him. He wrenches himself off of Minamoto’s knot with a bitten-back cry and an excruciating tearing sensation, stumbles out of the bed on wobbly legs, and immediately makes for the nearby window, running entirely on instinct and adrenaline and sheer determination.

That is his third and final mistake.

Behind him, Madara roars, a primal sound that shakes him to the bone and drives him to run faster, faster, faster even though his feet are bare and his body is exposed.

_ Alpha, _ Tobirama thinks, completely and totally infatuated with that sound and the strength of the man who had produced it, running so that he can lure a powerful alpha into chasing him and catching him.

_ Enemy, _ Tobirama thinks, running with the desperate need to escape from a foe who is stronger than him and fully lucid, from a man whose little brother’s life he has endangered time and time again, from a ninja who can stand up to his Anija and live to tell the tale.

Rain pelts against his naked skin, stinging and cold with the chill of early autumn, but still he perseveres, vanishing into the darkness of the forest that surrounds the Shogun’s palace and darting south for Fire Country, leaving behind only his bloodied, muddied footprints and a thin trail of heat-scent.


	3. MADARA I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back at it with another chapter! i hope you guys enjoy this, it was hell to write lmao

It is raining. It has been raining for hours and there is little doubt that it will rain for hours more. Water sloughs down from the sky with impressive force, spraying against Madara’s pauldrons and soaking him to the skin. His sandals slip and squelch against the branches beneath him. His sopping hair clings cold and heavy to his face and cheeks and neck.

At this point, he’s not sure what he _wouldn’t_ sacrifice to be in Suna, warm and dry and sunburnt and _not fucking wet._

The storm does not abate as the forest thins, forcing him to the muddy ground as the winds pick up with a howl. It only continues to intensify, great rolling roars of thunder shaking his footing only moments after lightning ignites the dark sky with veined lances of electricity.

He’s never been gladder to see a civilian stronghold than he is at the sight of the Shogun’s Water Country palace, stumbling through the gates with dampness sinking into his bones and the chill of early autumn making him shiver beneath his armor and soaked clothing.

He’s greeted by a samurai woman with big blue-gray eyes and short bronze hair shorn into a bob, her lacquered, plated armor gleaming in the torchlight and her naginata’s blade shining-sharp.

“Lord Uchiha,” she says, and when he quirks an eyebrow at her immediate identification of him in his admittedly pathetic state, the only explanation she offers is, “the Shogun’s little birds are everywhere, always listening. Follow me – we have prepared for you a suite of rooms where you can change and warm yourself by the fire.”

“That would be welcome,” he replies, because it would be socially unacceptable to jump up and down and screech with joy at the idea of being dry once more. “Is his lordship expecting me soon?”

“In an hour and a half, Lord Uchiha. Plenty of time for you to rest from your long journey.”

Madara isn’t particularly inclined to gratitude, but he bows thankfully to the samurai woman anyway when she shows him to his temporary chambers before making like an arrow for the shower.

This time, the water is steaming hot and welcome as it runs down the planes of his back and chest, stripping the mud from his skin and warming his numbed extremities. Madara hums to himself as he massages soaps and oils into his thick mane of hair, brushing out leaf matter and clumps of dirt and making faces at the wash of green-brown filth that circles the drain. Once his skin is recognizably pink once more, flushed red from the unforgiving heat of the Katon jutsu he’d used to warm the water, he steps out, flash-drying his hair with a quick Fuuton: Concentrated Gale and tying it up into a knot on the top of his head.

He feels vaguely human again by the time he makes it into the bath, relaxing into the pleasantly scented salts and soaps and allowing his mind to wander as he takes the time to relax. It’s been ages since he was last properly able to do so, and this is no true retreat, but any spare moment of rest he can manage to find while at war is a moment to be treasured; there’s no need for him to waste away his recently-returned good mood by ruining it with thoughts of the Senju.

So of course that’s exactly what he does.

It’s been years since he allowed himself to think of Hashirama as anything but the enemy he is, years since he saw the friend and not the rival, years since their clashes together were anything but contentious and fraught with repressed emotions.

He sinks back into the water with a curse, pressing wet hands to his face and trying not to visualize that little boy by the riverbank, crying for his dead brothers, crying for his _living_ brother, for the strong chance that he wouldn’t be able to  protect him, and the powerful, immediate kinship they’d shared at the idea of peace.

_Hashirama’s bowl cut blows in the wind, silken strands of glossy brown hair whipping about his face, bangs falling into his eyes. With his skin tone and his accent and his manner of speech, he can’t be anything but a Senju, and he’s sure his friend has recognized his own dark eyes and porcelain-pale complexion and spiky black hair and placed him as an Uchiha, but here and now, that doesn’t matter. Here and now, the wars don’t exist._

_Here and now, there is only the two of them, mourning brothers lost and praying for the lives of brothers who have yet to die. Madara thinks of Izuna, thinks of his petite stature and large, heavy-lashed eyes and plush lips, how he carries his dynamic in the way he walks and acts, like a challenge, like a dare to anyone in their Clan who would be so foolish as to look down on him for being an omega, look down on him for having the gall to appear the part._

_“What was his name?” he asks, because the grief-laden silence drags him back into thoughts of his own brothers, and he can’t go back there. Not again._

_“Itama,” Hashirama murmurs, sketching his name out onto the shore. It ends in the same kanji character as Hashirama’s own name, -ma – more evidence that he’s a Senju, since they use that end spelling almost exclusively for men of their line – but it’s written sloppy, poorly, as if bad handwriting will mean that Madara doesn’t recognize the pattern._

_He does, but he sees through it, sees Hashirama’s wordless plea to let things stay the same between them as they always have been, and all he says is, “That’s a nice name.”_

_“He was a nice person. He was going to be a healer, I think. His chakra control wasn’t as good as Tobirama’s is but it was still way better than mine, and he would have been – poorly suited to front-line battle.”_

_He was **seven,** Madara wants to scream. Of course he would be poorly suited to front-line battle. He knows, though, that Hashirama is talking about his temperament, and he pictures another boy with his same dark skin and large brown eyes and dumb haircut, and the sharp pang of grief he feels is unwelcome but not unexpected._

_He doesn’t know what he’d do if Hashirama died._

He still doesn’t. If Hashirama died, all chance for peace would be lost, and then _Tobirama_ would be Clan Head – Tobirama, the coldest, most unpleasantly domineering alpha Madara has ever had the displeasure of meeting face-to-face, with the harsh chemical burn of his scent and his ruthless viciousness in combat.

It’s really a miracle that Izuna’s survived all these years, going up against a foe like that, but Madara knows to count his blessings, and he doesn’t question it.

The only variable at that point would be how long it would take for the war to end in the Senju’s favor – Madara is no fool, he knows of the younger brother’s mind for strategy, knows of Hashirama’s famous mercy, knows that the latter is the only thing saving his Clan from being wiped from existence altogether – and he shivers in the cooling water, thinking of that _monster_ cutting through his family, his Clanmates, the people he’s grown up with and killed to defend.

Thank the Sage that Hashirama is so strong. Madara can’t imagine any future involving Tobirama that would be anything but completely, utterly _hellish._ It makes him wonder what Hashirama sees in his little brother; surely, being close to him would be horrible, given his caustic attitude and caustic smell. Surely, it would be a fate worse than death to have to be _kind_ to him, to have to look into those lifeless red eyes and smile and pretend to feel love that the man is just emotionally incapable of reciprocating.

He climbs up out of the tub with a wince – his foot fell asleep while he was thinking – and warms his blood with a quick Katon jutsu. It takes him minutes to dry himself off and dress himself up for court in his finest silken mantle and best gilded armor, and by that time, the samurai woman from before is back; by that time, he’s ready to be called before the Shogun.

Minamoto Daimaru is a withered old thing, sitting at his kotatsu in a yukata, drinking tea and staring with milky, rheumy eyes at the fusuma panels opposite him. His thinning gray hair is tied back in a bun, a style popular for the men at court, and his glasses are perched at the end of his nose, fogged up with steam. One gnarled, crooked claw is clenched tight around the teacup, and the other beckons for Madara to come closer, to sit down.  

He’d rather die, but the Shogun is not a man to say no to, so he does it without complaint and takes the offered teacup, sipping at it politely with minimal slurping. He was raised as the heir to a noble Clan, and despite what lies and slander Izuna is fond of spreading about him, he _does_ have manners, and he even knows how to use them.

“So,” Madara says rather awkwardly, “how is Daisuke faring in the early hours of his rut?” He himself is no stranger to the peak of an alpha’s reproductive cycle, and he winces at the reminder that he’s going to have to be defending a man who is biologically compelled to be hostile and unpleasant towards others of his same dynamic.

“Oh,” says Minamoto, casually destroying Madara’s cool, practiced calm with six words, “he’s already with an omega.”

“Already—” Madara blusters, standing up and shoving his teacup to the table, “— _with an omega?_ Has this _courtesan_ been vetted yet? Approved to be safe?”

Minamoto arches one graying eyebrow. “Lord Uchiha, it’s just an _omega,_ and it’s in heat to boot. There is very little danger that such a creature could pose to my son.”

He remembers the aftermath of the mission where Izuna had gone into his second-ever heat, remembers the screams and the pleading and the _blood._

_No, no, please, I’m sorry—_

_Squelch._

He’d come home covered head to toe in red with his Sharingan finally activated by the panic of almost being brutalized by those monsters he’d slaughtered, a fainting Hikaku by his side, intestines slung around his neck like a scarf and sharp white teeth stained crimson from where he’d bitten his way free of capture. Once all of the blood had been wiped off, Madara had seen the bruises, and – well.

He wasn’t ever going to forgive anyone who dared to touch his last baby brother with harmful intent, and he’d been glad to know that they got what they deserved.

Madara had never needed _proof_ to know that omegas are just as deadly as any other dynamic when properly trained – more, even, because of how people will foolishly underestimate them for their perceived weaknesses – but that incident remains prominent in his mind as he goes temporarily insane and starts _yelling at the Shogun._

“Are you a _fool_ or do you _want_ your son to die?” Madara roars, summoning his gunbai from the storage scroll it had been tucked away into and planting it right in front of him, cutting the table into two with a burst of splintered wood and a sharp barrier made between he and Minamoto. He doesn’t want to get any closer to the man than he already is – perhaps his idiocy is contagious. “You – omegas – Daisuke could be with an _assassin_ right now and you would have just _let it happen_ because his murderer is an _omega?”_

To his credit, the old man doesn’t flinch away from Madara’s sudden outburst, uncowed by his sudden hostility and adamant alpha posturing. His voice is even and cool when he speaks, eyes glittering with a calculated light.

“This is a true threat, you say?”

He’s – he’s taking Madara seriously, at least, and that smooths his hackles, bringing the raging red flood of his temper low enough for him to realize that he just practically assaulted the fucking _Shogun,_ and that every samurai in the room is pointing their weapon at him, and oh, _fuck._

He clears his throat, stops emitting dominant pheromones, and retakes his seat. If Daisuke can’t spare more than a moment, that’ll just be too bad; Madara has politicking to survive, and it’s the Shogun himself who’s holding him up. In the case that he’s already too late, it won’t be his fault, and he’ll be able to return home safe without having made himself an enemy of the strongest united military force anywhere in the Elemental Countries.

“Yes,” Madara says, and his tone is stilted and awkward, but his energy burns high and bright with the urgent need to see to his client, who is more than likely in mortal danger right now, given his high status and vulnerable state, and Minamoto waves away his guards so that there aren’t spearheads poking into his back and face. “I – apologize, Minamoto-sama, that was poorly done of me, but—”

“You’re legitimately concerned for the safety of my boy,” he replies, and his milky dark gaze is cold and composed when it sweeps across Madara’s face. “I am aware of your temper, Lord Uchiha, and I am not afraid of it, nor am I afraid of you.”

Powerful he may be, but the old man is still a civilian, and such a bold statement makes bitter bile surge up in Madara’s throat.

 _Oh no,_ he thinks with some dismay. _He’s **stupid.**_  

“You are free to go and check on him. Yamamoto, Kaizawa, let him pass.”

He leaves in a swirl of smoke with a litany of mumbled apologies and then bolts down the maze-like halls to the younger Minamoto’s chambers, not stopping or slowing his charge even when the painted red doors come into sight.

The doors explode inwards, wood shattering and splintering beneath the forceful impact of Madara’s gloved fist and armored shoulder. He steps through the frames, Sharingan flaring to life in a burst of panicked chakra, and it’s then that the smell hits him. 

It’s the most exquisite scent he’s ever known. Deep and salty and layered, like ocean winds and natural sugars and bloodied metal, like molten ice and petrichor and seafoam, like a mountain spring that he wants to drown himself in just so that he can get more, more, _more._ There’s something there that he doesn’t quite remember, some kind of delicacy hidden deep within the folds of his mind, but he can’t place it for now. 

It takes him a moment to realize the source of the arresting quality of the scent is due to omega heat pheromones, and then he slips his eyes open – he hadn’t even known that they were shut – to meet the gaze of the omega the smell comes from. 

He looks up to recognize the narrow, sharp-lined face of Senju Tobirama, Hashirama’s little brother, notoriously an alpha. He looks up and sees the hellfire red of his irises nearly swallowed by the blown black of his pupils, widened in his arousal, because he’s in heat.

Hashirama’s alpha baby brother is no alpha at all. He’s a bitch, a breeder, an omega, and he smells – _amazing._  

He’s – beautiful, too, and suddenly Madara can’t help but notice the fine structure of his features, the vivid red of his eyes, the soft platinum plumes of his hair. His Sharingan heightens his perception to crystal clarity, and every drop of sweat that drips down Tobirama’s throat and prominent collarbones is easily visible to him, burned forever into his memory banks. The muscles of his arms and thighs and abdomen, strong and wiry and conspicuous. The glazed-over glitter of his unfocused glare is settled at some point around Madara’s head but not quite on his face. His face is smeared with blood and sweat and makeup, teeth stained a sticky red from where they’d just been buried in Minamoto’s carotid artery. His tattoos extend past his face all the way down to his chest, and farther still, going down to his – to his—

_—he has tattoos on his—_

Madara whips around with a screech, fingers slapping over his eyes. “Immodest Senju bastard, what is _wrong_ with you, putting ink where ink should never go!”

Tobirama doesn’t respond – either he doesn’t hear him in the midst of his heat-haze or he simply doesn’t care for Madara’s proper, acceptable opinions on what does and does not constitute appropriate body modification – but there’s a squelching, ripping noise, and he turns back around in horror, because that could _not_ have possibly just happened. No one has that kind of pain tolerance.

Tobirama has that kind of pain tolerance, and he just tears himself off of Minamoto’s knot with an expression of carefully calculated disinterest, like he murders alphas after fucking them every single time he goes through a heat. 

 _Does_ he?

It would explain – quite a lot, actually. 

His jaws are still dripping with Minamoto’s lifeblood – it hasn’t even begun to dry yet. He looks feral, ferocious, more bestial than human, teeth stained red and lips peeled back in a snarl. Beneath him, Minamoto lies still, throat torn open and lax limbs sprawling across the bloodied sheets. 

He’s dead. He’s _dead._ Madara has failed, and rather spectacularly at that.

… _Senju Tobirama_ is an _omega._  

Their gazes break before Madara can think to catch him in a genjutsu, and in the moments he wastes trying to process the situation as reality comes flooding back to him, Tobirama makes his escape. He wobbles to the window and escapes just as he roars for the Senju to stop, to turn around, to come back, you can’t just _leave._  

He just leaves, vanishing into the night and the thick shadows of the nearby forest, leaving Madara behind, dizzy with the implications of his new discovery.

The only thing clear in his mind as he rushes out the window, hacking at thin air with his gunbai, is the deep, inexplicable, primal urge to  _chase,_ the need to  _catch._

He can't let his mate get away so easily.


	4. HASHIRAMA I

_Did you know, Hashirama-kun? You’re going to be a big brother!_

Ever since his conception, Tobirama has been the center of Hashirama’s existence, the nexus around which his universe orients itself.

_Damn brat’s an **albino,** Tsukike, not to mention an omega. Drown it in the Nakano before its curse spreads to the others and be done with it. Oh, and stop fucking crying, will you? It’s getting old._

Captivated by big red eyes and soft white hair from the moment he first saw them, Hashirama’s life has always been about one thing, first and foremost: protecting his dear otouto.

Everything else has always been secondary.

_Tobirama, four years old, red-faced and gasping, enduring blow after blow after blow. Butsuma allowed him to quit his lessons, quit his sewing, and learn to fight, on the condition that he take everything done to him without so much as a whisper of complaint, and – well._

_He’s always been so good at being obedient._

Hashirama cradles his brother’s happuri faceguard in trembling hands, running quaking thumbs over the scratched steel surface and stroking at the Senju crest on the forehead. It’s saved his life more times than he can count, but he’s left it behind, now, wherever he is. He _chose_ to leave it behind, because everything Tobirama does is purposeful, deliberate, calculated.

_Anija, please don’t go…please don’t leave me…it **hurts,** Anija, I don’t know what to do…_

His vision blurs and wavers, and it takes Hashirama a moment to realize that he’s crying. Genuine, this time, silent and horrible and choking, and his tears are running down the faceguard, tainting it with his misery, but who is here to notice? Who is here to wear it, to complain about him sobbing all over pristine belongings?

 _Your weakness, boy, is that you **care** too much. I’m going to strike your brother, and you are not to cry out, you hear me? You are not to react at all, and when you master this skill, I’ll stop hitting him. Hashirama! Are you listening? Cease your crying this instant and pay attention, or Tobirama will suffer more for it!_ 

Tobirama’s room smells like omega, smells like otouto, smells like caramelized sugar and knife-sharp ozone and snowmelt. It’s a familiar scent, a soothing scent, one that has been known to calm Hashirama in his rare rages and draw him out of his glooms for the sake of his Tobirama, the only omega in his inner circle, one of the only omegas in all of his Clan, his pack.

_Anija. Anija, it hurts, Anija, please don’t leave me, it’s so dark in here and I don’t want to be alone…Anija, please, it’s **agony…**_

He doesn’t notice Mito approaching, and it’s only when her spiceflower-seawater scent surrounds him that he realizes he’s not alone anymore.

_Don’t worry, Anija. Uzumaki is a good match, and Mito is a dear friend of mine. I have complete confidence that you’ll do well together._

“Hashirama,” his wife says, voice sharp and severe. “Hashirama, you have to go outside, it’s been days.”

_Tobirama, newly twenty-two, red eyes sparkling as he’s presented with a scroll older than the Senju Clan and twice as complicated. Tobirama, just a few months ago, sparring with Hashirama in the gardens, making straight-faced jokes and then striking when he laughs at them. Tobirama, the day before he vanished, grim-faced and dutiful, self-sacrificing and stupid and so dear to him that it’s a wonder his absence hasn’t driven him totally insane yet._

“He’s gone,” Hashirama hears himself say, although he can’t recall ever opening his mouth and speaking. “What’s the point of going outside if he won’t be there?”

 _Itama, vanishing into the night at seven years old for a mission, coming home on a tarp with his entrails spilling out of his skinny torso, white-and-black hair crusted with blood and mud and dust. Kawarama, four, forced onto the battlefield to carry messages back and forth between combatants, impaled by an Uchiha spear._  

Mito sighs, and moments later there are small hands sliding over his shoulders, the warmth of another body at his back, the soft press of her breasts against his shoulderblades. “You still have people who need you, husband,” she says into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Tōka needs you, Kimiko needs you, _I_ need you.” 

_How Tobirama had looked cradling Hashirama’s baby girl in his arms, gently bouncing his niece around, much to her delight. How all of the Senju children adore their favorite cousin and most competent sensei, following his brother around like a trail of little ducklings. How Tobirama’s first concern is not for himself, never for himself, but for the small ones, the vulnerable ones, the pups who might have been harmed by the vicious raging of the wars._

“He needs me too,” Hashirama replies, and strangely, his voice is wavery, watery. Oh, right. The tears. He’d forgotten. They’re not as important as what precious memories he has with his otouto. 

And, of course, the not-so-precious ones.

_Hashirama is nineteen years old when he becomes the Clan Head under odd circumstances, nineteen years old when Butsuma dies, nineteen years old, and he doesn’t regret it for even a moment._

_“You bring me that brother of yours,” Butsuma tells him one day soon after the end of Tobirama’s first heat. “I have a – mission for him.”_

_That catches Hashirama’s attention. Father hates sending Tobirama out on jobs, always fearful that he’ll be captured by bloodline thieves, raped for their family’s Mokuton, scared that the pristine reputation his otouto has been cultivating so far would be ruined should his true dynamic ever come to light._

_Never concerned for Tobirama’s safety. Hashirama hates this man **so much.**_

_“…A mission,” Hashirama says, cautious. “What kind of mission?”_

_“That’s none of your business. Go fetch Tobirama and you’ll be free to return to whatever you were doing before.” Butsuma doesn’t look up from whatever document he’s reading._

_Hashirama can’t quite believe it. “You’ve kept him practically bottled up in the compound for years now and you’re just deciding to send him on a **mission?** ”_

He can feel Mito’s glare burning into the back of his head, can feel the Nine-Tails thrashing from inside her Byakugō, can sense the rare red tide of her anger rising within her, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. What does it matter, if Mito is angry? Tobirama could be _dead._ What would anything matter, if he is?

_Tobirama, bursting into his room later that night, eyes wide and scent sour with his horror. It takes Hashirama twenty minutes to calm his otouto down enough to the point where he’s capable of talking, but still he refuses to speak about what he and Butsuma discussed after Hashirama left._

“Alpha,” Mito tries, voice cloying and sickly-sweet. “Alpha, please, we have need of your guidance.”

Hashirama has never been his father, and it’s not like Mito is even an omega at all. Her appeals to his baser instincts miss their mark entirely, absorbed as his mind is with Tobirama’s safety.

_It takes nearly the entire night for Hashirama to coax the truth out of his little brother, and when he finally admits to it, when he finally reveals that the **mission** Butsuma had wanted to send him on was really just an assignment to pick a suitable mate, let himself be caught in a marriage hunt, and produce pups with his genius and chakra control and sensor abilities—_

_Hashirama’s vision floods green, and he’s going to **hurt** that man, is going to ruin him so absolutely that he’ll never dare to even try forcing Tobirama into a partnership he doesn’t want and is too young for anyway. He doesn’t see the way Tobirama blanches at his killing intent, doesn’t hear his protests, doesn’t feel his hands on his arms, trying to drag him back down to the futon they’d been sitting on._

Abruptly he remembers that before Tobirama became a shinobi, a time nearly gone from Hashirama’s memory banks altogether, Father entered into an arranged engagement with Mito’s mother, an alliance to be secured by Tobirama and Mito’s eventual marriage and the birth of their children.

Mito herself had nothing to do with it, of course, and she ended up marrying and mating Hashirama himself anyway for the sake of the peace treaty between her people and his, but—

The idea of _Mito_ being Tobirama’s alpha, _Mito_ siring Tobirama’s babies, _Hashirama’s niblings,_ _Mito_ laying claim to his precious baby brother – it’s just an idea, an aborted engagement that has long since been buried in the past, and he knows that, but it’s still _too much._

_Butsuma must have known that Tobirama wouldn’t be able to keep his silence. He’s clearly expecting Hashirama’s arrival, and his sharp brown eyes are cold and clear when they meet those of his son._

_Hashirama is so angry that he doesn’t notice the seals inked across his father’s palms. He’s so angry that he doesn’t consider repercussions at all when he surges forward, Mokuton flooding his field of vision. He’s so angry that it’s not at all difficult for Father to catch him in a trap, paralyze him with the contact-based stasis seals painted across his hands, and leave him trembling and statue-still in the middle of the office, hands stopped midway through a string of signs, hair whipping around his face, suspended in midair._

“Go _away,_ Mito,” Hashirama snarls, gripping at the happuri faceguard with such force that the metal begins to warp and bend beneath his touch. “You – I don’t _want_ you here. Go watch the baby or yell at the elders or accept a mission. I don’t care what you do so long as you _leave.”_

_The razor’s edge of the kunai knife is icy cold when Butsuma drags it across his throat. The clamp of his father’s hands on his shoulders is so tight as to be bruising. The sound of his voice is soft and sweet with the underlying malice of a threat._

_“I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” Butsuma says, and if Hashirama isn’t hallucinating the pleased lilt to his words, he’s **glad** that his own son is committing blatant treason, trying to kill his father, his Clan Head, his pack’s head alpha. “Such a soft spot for your brother. You tried to murder me for commanding him to become the breeding bitch he was always meant to be; what would you do if I told you that I’ve sold him out to bands of mercenaries? That they get to do what they want with him in return for their support in the wars, so long as he doesn’t die? Do you think that he’ll birth enough children to produce at least one with the Mokuton? He’s such a promising young man, after all. Such a skilled shinobi. I know you despair for him, Hashirama. I know what you think of him when he kills. I hope you know that it’s your uncertainty in his – shall we call it **loyalty?** – that gave me the idea for this.”_

He can practically feel Mito’s lips tighten into a thin, painted line, but she’s not stupid and she knows when to give up a fight. Her skirts whisper against the bamboo flooring as she gets up and goes, probably to spar with Tōka in the gardens or work out her frustration through some other method that won’t endanger their daughter.

Kimiko is a darling, practically perfect in every way. Tobirama loves her _so much._ He’s been bringing back toys and treats of all kinds for her since they knew Mito was pregnant, always taking the time on his missions to find some small, meaningful present for his beloved niece.

_His – it’s **Hashirama’s** fault? His fault that Butsuma wants to sell Tobirama to be an incubator for the Mokuton and a whore for unaffiliated, untrustworthy soldiers unwanted by everyone else? His doubt in—_

_—but he has questioned Tobirama before, hasn’t he. He has wondered if his little brother is his little brother at all anymore, watching the man train in the sparring grounds until he drops unconscious on his feet, watching him go after Uchiha Izuna with a viciousness unmatched by anything else Hashirama’s seen from him, watching him hide behind his stony façade until the façade is all that remains of him._  

The steel of the faceguard screeches in protest at the strength of Hashirama’s grip, and it almost bends before he realizes what he’s done to it, jumping back and away from it, horrified by the way he’d almost destroyed one of the last things that remains of his last brother.

_“The elders won’t question your death. They’ll be unhappy, certainly, that we’ll have to rely on your brother to beget another, proper heir – he can only get pregnant so many times, and of course childbirth is notoriously dangerous – but they’ll get over it. You were always a wild card, a variable they couldn’t ever account for or predict.”_

_The knife cuts into the soft skin of Hashirama’s throat, and he can’t move a muscle, can’t call for help, can’t even twitch as Butsuma starts to saw through his neck, just as slowly as he pleases._

_His father is a tricky old bastard, a very skilled shinobi, but despite all of his years of experience, he is no sensor. He isn’t omnipotent. He doesn’t notice Tobirama sliding up behind him until he’s already drowning in the icy ocean of his youngest son’s killing intent, doesn’t have time to react before Tobirama’s favorite sword severs his neck from his shoulders._

_The kunai drops to the floor with a clatter, and after that, the only sound is the heavy gust of Tobirama’s breathing._

Hashirama – Hashirama can’t be here, can’t threaten the integrity of Tobirama’s things. _When_ his otouto comes home, he’ll catch hell for it. 

If he never comes home at all, Hashirama will have ruined the remnants of his life, the swords and armor and scrolls that he took such immaculate care of. He’ll have destroyed everything he has of Tobirama save the memories locked away inside his skull, memories he knows to be impermanent, fleeting and fragile. It’s been so long since he’s seen his mothers that he’s forgotten the sounds of their voices, forgotten the exact color and style of Kawarama’s hair, forgotten that Itama favored daggers over swords.

If Tobirama doesn’t return, if he is reduced to the battered old faceguard and the weapons hanging on the wall and the giant scroll full of ingenious kinjutsus, if he remains alive only in what fading recollections Hashirama has of him—

_The Edo Tensei is a vile thing, a nasty little spell that warps the boundaries of life and death and defiles the spirits of the passed while destroying the spirits of the waking._

_When Hashirama caught him with a pair of old, comatose shinobi and the dust of their little brothers’ bones, Tobirama hadn’t even understood what he’d been angry about._

—well. To say that he fears what he would do in his grief would be an understatement.


	5. TOBIRAMA II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did NOT like the last tobirama ii so here's a new one that's pretty much entirely madatobi porn. please enjoy

Tobirama’s fingers are sticky with blood and slick. The small clearing where he’d chosen to wait for his coming assailants is drenched in his heat-scent, stinking so strongly of omega that its smell should reach everyone with a working nose within a two-kilometer radius.

That’s just fine by him. The more lives he has to fuel the jūinjutsu, the stronger the resulting seals will be, and the more protection he’ll have for the rest of the duration of his heat.

Healing his torn cunt was a matter of swallowing down his arousal and praying that he wouldn’t do too much damage to his sex, but he’d managed it – the rip is repaired, the stitches hold strong, the oncoming infection is banished – and although he’ll still have to go to Hashirama to ensure that he’ll recover properly when (if) he makes it home, he should be able to masturbate again.

His lucidity is slipping away from him like the rainwater running down his cheeks and dripping off his eyelashes, but he isn’t a genius for nothing, and he earned his reputation as the White Demon with sweat and blood and his own indomitable talent.

Tobirama smirks to himself, sharp and feral and entirely animalistic.

All that’s really left to do is _wait._

Time passes in a feverish haze. Tobirama becomes so absorbed in his fantasies that he barely registers the existence of the outside world; the apocalypse could be imminent and he wouldn’t know.

Normally, that willful ignorance would frustrate him to no end, but heat reduces him to a raging beast running on hormones and instinct, and at the moment, he couldn’t care less if the world was ending or not. His sex and thighs are soaked, glittering with slick in the low light of his shelter – oddly enough, the cave he’d chosen to hide in appears to have quadrupled in size seemingly overnight, but it’s not like he has the capacity to care about that – his cock weeps precum, and within him, a surge of wildfire need burns violent and heady through his body, leaving him a shaking, whimpering puddle on the ground.

The only outside sensation he’s remotely aware of is an oddly familiar scent whose source he just can’t place, an alpha-scent like woodsmoke and leather and stars gone supernova, a _delicious_ alpha-scent that Tobirama’s brain latches onto in the absence of an actual alpha.

His mind conjures a phantom of a partner for him to masturbate to, a broad, muscular shinobi with wild black hair and dark, dark eyes, a man with strength rippling through every part of him, an alpha who desires Tobirama wholly and unconditionally, because of his flaws and not in spite of them.

He allows his eyes to slip shut and permits his imagination to subsume his consciousness.

_Gloved hands smooth over his naked thighs, leather gliding over pale, sweat-slick skin. All around him, the scent of bloodied metal and burning plant matter is so thick as to be choking; Tobirama’s alpha smells like a funeral pyre, like the setting sun, like a lit flare._

_“Sage,” the man murmurs, voice almost a growl, low and throaty and gravelly. “Sage, you’re so gorgeous, how can this be real…”_

_Beneath him, Tobirama whines, spreading his legs farther apart, and his mate’s chakra spikes as his Sharingan activates. It sears into his memory the sight of him splayed flushed and panting against the ground, sex throbbing, scent heavy with arousal and heat pheromones._

_“Please, Madara,” he mumbles, desperate and needy, pitching his voice high in an attempt to convince the alpha – Madara? – to fuck him. “Please, alpha…”_

_It doesn’t work. In a single movement, Madara is suddenly perched on the cradle of his hips, using his superior weight to crush Tobirama against the ground, effectively immobilizing him, not that he was going anywhere anyway. Hands wrap around his throat, pressing at his trachea, his jugular, his scent-glands._

_“Don’t worry, beloved,” the alpha purrs at him. “We’ll get to that soon enough. Just be patient and you’ll get everything you want and more.”_

_He steps back, resettling himself in between Tobirama’s trembling legs, and he throws his head back against the floor in frustration as the ministrations continue, no closer to where he wants them to be._

_“But it **hurts,”** he whimpers, and he’s too far gone to be embarrassed about producing such a pathetic little noise in front of his greatest enemy. Madara seems to like it, anyway, seems to delight in the fact that he’s reduced the white demon of the Senju to a begging mess of hormones and urges, and he’s rewarded with a light kiss against the head of his cock._

_His hips stutter forward on instinct, but the mouth retreats, and soon enough the hands are back, pressing down on his hipbones, definitively **not** touching what he wants them to._

_Tobirama wasn’t lying – it does hurt. The agony of overwhelmingly intense arousal is a good one that aches with a sweet burn in his blood vessels and the pit of his stomach, but it is an agony nonetheless, excruciating in all the best ways and absolutely **maddening,** considering the fact that there’s a strong, capable alpha literally right up in his business, **not doing anything.**_

_Madara laughs at him. “Ah, Senju, you’re so cute when you’re pleading for my cock like the bitch you are. Who knew? Senju Tobirama, feared by all in my Clan, and you’re on your back and begging the moment I promise to knot you.”_

_At the word knot, Tobirama’s mind short-circuits, and he thrashes beneath Madara’s hold, biting his tongue to keep from screaming as he tries to worm his way free. Uchiha is more lucid than he, though, and stronger to boot, so he doesn’t get far, but it does finally clue the great bastard in to how he’s fucking feeling, and finally, finally, **finally** the gloves come off, bare, long-fingered hands settling at the junction of his legs, massaging the base of his cock and playing with his dripping folds._

_He’s embarrassingly wet, but he doesn’t care, because at last there are touches – gentle and slow, but touches nonetheless – and he could almost cry at the cool relief of surging pleasure._

_“Gods, you’re so receptive. I could play with you all day and you’d come from that, wouldn’t you? I could torture you with not-enough and it would still push you over the edge, what with this state that you’re in.”_

_“Try it,” Tobirama tells him with a frosty fury in his tone, “and I’ll cut off your knot and stuff it. Perhaps I’ll hang it above my door as a warning to any other alphas **stupid** enough to try and get one over on me.”_

_For some reason, that makes Madara snort in amusement. “Ah, my beloved, so fierce, so angry. Calm yourself, Senju. There’s no need for your temper, not here. I just want to prepare you properly. The only pain you’ll know with me is the sweet burn of post-lovemaking.”_

_That’s enough to slake Tobirama’s thirst for now, and he allows the tension to bleed out of his body, withdrawing his hands so that he can play with his nipples as Madara returns his attention to his sex._

_Those wonderfully skilled fingers caress his slick folds, prodding carefully at his entrance before they slip inside, teasing at the ridges of his inner walls, exploring the hot wet vice of his channel._

_“You’ve got such a gorgeous pussy, you know,” Madara tells him in a kind of reverent whisper that makes him blush. “I think I’m going to knot it.”_

_“You **think?** ” Tobirama snarks, because he is nothing if not unreasonably belligerent, and the delicious burn of the hands stretching him out intensifies. “I’d like a mate who knows what he wants from me, thank you very much. If you find that you’re not up to the task, Uchiha, you can always be replaced. It’s not an issue.”_

_It was the wrong thing to say. The fingers retreat and Madara’s snarl is audible, his displeasure palpable in the air, and Tobirama is just about to berate himself for being stupid when the tip of something large and blunt nudges at his entrance, not quite inside but certainly not far off from it._

_He stifles his satisfied smirk with a breathless moan. Alphas. All so_ **_predictable._ ** _Tease them, play with them, insult them; it’s so easy to rile them up, and Madara especially, temperamental bastard that he is._

_The hands, still sticky with his own slick, pin him to the ground by his waist, and his mate grinds down on him, their cocks rubbing against each other with an excruciating friction that makes his eyesight blur into black and white splotches._

_“Such a contrary bitch you are, beloved,” Madara snaps, the anger in his tone paling in comparison to the arousal Tobirama can sense flooding his body. “I’m fairly certain that it’s you in heat, here, not me in rut. Do you want me to leave you alone and wanting, or do you want me to fuck you?”_

_The words slam into him with the impact of a punch to the solar plexus, and while he’s still reeling and gasping, his alpha leans down and delivers the final blow._

_“Don’t you want me, To-bi-ra-ma? Don’t you want me to breed you full of an entire litter? Don’t you want me to pleasure you until you can’t help but scream and fill you up with my seed? You’d look so gorgeous carrying my pups, Senju. You were made for it, with these hips and this cunt of yours. What a perfect breeding bitch.”_

_His words are derogatory, demeaning, but they appeal to Tobirama’s omega hindbrain in a way nothing else he’s said so far has managed to do, and he makes the mistake of picturing it, makes the mistake of wondering what it would feel like to mother Madara’s children._

_The sudden need that overcomes him then is like nothing he’s ever known._

_“I’m never going to leave you, never going to let you go, never going to push you away,” Madara’s voice growls into the soft skin of his throat, his unsheathed canines dragging over red-marked paleness. “You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours and we’ll be each other’s, forever, from now until time goes to rest.”_

_Tobirama was only teasing, but the emotion in his words is raw and real, and he slips his hands over Madara’s shoulders, stroking soothingly at the muscles of his back, pressing his jaw into the dip of his neck. “Very well, then, alpha,” he says, fingers tapping lightly against the other’s shoulderblades. “That’s what I wanted, and I’ll accept your proposal, on one condition.”_

_“Oh? What’s this condition?”_

_“I’ll agree to spend the rest of my life with you as long as you hurry **up** and fuck me already, you slug bastard.”_

_The sudden gravity that had ensnared them dissolves, and Madara laughs, snapping his hips up with a violent delight that leaves Tobirama gasping for breath as he’s suddenly filled. It’s rough but not too rough, fast but not too fast, just the way he likes it, and it occurs to him that he’ll never find another, more thoughtful alpha than the one he’s already chosen._

_How convenient, he muses, pleasure searing like white lightning along his synapses as they roll their hips together, setting a good, harsh rhythm that leaves him breathless and wanting more. Selecting a different mate when I’ve put so much effort into this one would be rather trying._

_“You’re thinking too much,” Madara whines, hands tightening around his hipbones as Tobirama bounces in his lap, the muscles of his thighs flexing as they move together. “You’re not supposed to be thinking, koibito, you’re supposed to have all the thoughts fucked right out of you.”_

_“Perhaps,” Tobirama informs him archly, “I’ll stop thinking if you do a better job of fucking.”_

_It’s a bluff – he’s not at all dissatisfied with Madara’s performance thus far – but it works, and the cock slips out of him just long enough for Madara to push him back against the ground, shoulderblades pressed into the grass. His hair falls around them in a wild black curtain, and Tobirama brings his hand up to his mate’s face, cupping the handsome sharpness of his jaw, locking eyes with him as Madara slips back in, the angle changed, deeper._

_“Better now, Senju?” he snaps, but his tone is undermined somewhat by his panting._

_“Getting there,” he replies, clenching tight around his Uchiha’s cock in a manner that makes the man choke on his own air. “Enough talking, now, hmm? I do believe you promised me a knot.”_

_Madara’s laugh is short and breathless. “So my beloved shall receive.”_

_The spell that falls over them then is indescribable in nature. Tobirama drifts away from his body, mind overwhelmed in a haze of pleasure, lightning setting his nerves alight as Madara rams into him so hard that he’s certain he’ll still be feeling their coupling tomorrow. His husband is still speaking – apparently, he’s just very talkative during sex, which really isn’t as much as a turn-off as he’d expected it to be – but the words float right over his head. He’s beyond the realm of comprehension, now, trapped in a foggy euphoria that rips through his being like earthquake after earthquake in time with every thrust._

_“Gods, gods,_ **_gods,_ ** _Tobirama, Tobirama-!”_

_“…Unf…”_

_They reach the apex of their pleasure in near-perfect sync, hot seed filling up Tobirama’s channel as his loins contract around Madara’s knot, tying them together. The sensation of being stuffed is an alien one, but he finds that he’s rapidly becoming addicted to it._

_It takes them a while to gather themselves enough to speak, but not so long that Madara’s knot deflates._

_“We,” Tobirama tells his alpha with a great deal of authority, “are going to do this again. And again. And again. With considerable frequency.”_

_The noise he receives in reply is dangerously close to a giggle, but he’s too high on bliss and pheromones to bother making fun of him for it. “Ah, ah, you need more trials to see if you like it, Senju? I’m pretty certain you enjoyed yourself just now. You’re so_ **_tight_ ** _, gods, so perfect…”_

_“…Thank you? No, I just want to feel that again.”_

_He pauses, and then, almost as an afterthought: “Besides, repeating couplings will increase your chances of impregnating me.”_

_Madara makes a broken wheezing sound and turns to look at him with wide Sharingan eyes. “You – you really do want that? You’ll be the mother of my pups?”_

_“Did you have another individual in mind?”_

_“Not exactly. I thought you were just playing along so as not to ruin the moment.”_

_“Mm.” He’s too tired to bother with a response, instead locking his legs tighter around Madara’s hips, digging his heels into the backs of his mate’s gorgeous thighs and forcing them closer together until no space remains between them. The heat and weight of Madara on top of him is perfectly welcome, and the tickle of thick dark hair against his neck and chin is worth it for the butterfly sensation of lips against his throat, whispering praise into his scent-glands._

It’s then that Tobirama feels himself tighten almost unbearably around his own fingers, his orgasm hitting him with all the impact of a charging elephant as he writhes around in the perfect agony of his heat.

Strange, he thinks, oddly detached from the world. He seems to find emotional connection more fulfilling than physical arousal.

…Best not to examine that too closely.

He tugs tired, sticky fingers out of his wonderfully sore entrance with an obscene squelch, wiping them absently on his thighs before the exhaustion overtakes him, sending him spiraling into the void with Madara’s phantom fantasy chasing his thoughts and the scent of starmetal and woodsmoke filling his nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uwu im very new to explicit stuff so please let me know in the comments if anything is awkward or weird or just not sexy!! positive reviews also help me improve :-)


	6. TOBIRAMA III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when in doubt. more porn.

_The bitter taste of seed floods his mouth, but he’s long since used to the sensation, and his throat bobs and convulses as he swallows it all down, savoring its flavor on his tongue. He pops off Madara’s cock with an obscene, wet sound, licking at his lips and staring up at his alpha through long white eyelashes._

_There’s no response – he’s still recovering from the intensity of what was probably a mind-shattering orgasm – so Tobirama takes the initiative to keep his pleasure going, leaning back down and brushing gentle kisses against Madara’s inflated knot. From above him, there’s a thin, weak groan, hands carding rough through his hair, and he has to muffle his laughter in the strong thighs bracketing his shoulders; for such a powerful ninja, his mate is incredibly sensitive when they’re intimate. Even the barest gust of breath against his cock is enough to make him shiver, and Tobirama has no compunctions about abusing this knowledge until Madara is fed up enough with his insolence to slam him down and fuck him like he wants him to._

_“Don’t bully me for coming, Senju bastard,” Madara moans, gloved hands slapping half-heartedly at the base of Tobirama’s neck, where he’s most sensitive to touch. “You just sucked my soul out through my cock, you heartless whore.”_

_“Shame,” Tobirama purrs, pitching his voice to be low and sultry, lavishing in the sight of Madara’s Sharingan eyes spinning nauseatingly fast, his pupils nearly swallowing up the black blur of his tomoe. “I’d rather come to like it, you know. You were just becoming bearable to be around, and now all of that good hard work that I’ve done is ruined.”_

_And then, for no reason greater than the impish impulse in his mind telling him to: “Maybe – maybe I should never have sex again. The consequences are clearly terrible…”_

_He chances a glance up to see Madara pale dramatically, as if he’d just suggested that they eat each other alive._

_“Entirely unnecessary!” he blurts, fisting his hands in Tobirama’s thick hair. “In fact, I think – I think we should have **more** sex. To see if repeat attempts can bring it back.”_

_He hides his smirk against Madara’s knot, but his husband is coming back down to himself, and from the way the fingers tighten against his scalp, his amusement has been noted. “…I’ll bring it before the council, Lord Uchiha, but you’ll have to wait and see if it gets their approval.”_

_“Good,” Madara growls, releasing his hair so that he can wrap his hands around Tobirama’s waist and drag him up into his lap proper, “although I’m afraid to say that I may proceed with the only approval that matters – yours.”_

_“Impatient,” Tobirama says, but the last half of the word becomes a gasp when Madara wrenches his gloves off and slides his fingers down the firm curve of his ass, the rough, calloused pads tugging at the back of his folds, teasing at his slick entrance._

_“Always has been a weakness of mine. Where do you want my fingers, love? Here—” The other hand moves to wrap around his cock, twisting loosely at the flushed shaft, simultaneous with the stroking of his cunt. “—or here?” The fingers run over his entrance, almost slipping in but not quite. “You’ve got such a pretty pussy, you know. I’d like to knot it, fill you up with seed and breed you full of an entire litter. You want that, Tobirama? You want me to fuck you until you’re crying and get you pregnant while I’m at it? You want to carry my pups until everybody knows you’re **mine** and mine alone?”_

_Tobirama makes the mistake of picturing that, and the sudden wanting slams into him with such force that he’s left gasping in its wake. He **does** want that. He does want Madara’s knot stuffing him so full that he can hardly breathe around it. He does want to bear Madara’s children, to suckle them and teach them and raise them alongside his husband. He does want the world to know that they are each other’s, **only** each other’s. He wants this man as his mate and his love and the father of his pups, wants to wake up alongside him every morning until their deaths, wants to have a family with him._

_Perhaps most importantly, he wants Madara to fuck him like he wants air, and suddenly he can’t stand the emptiness, grinding back down onto his alpha’s fingers even as they shrink away, never touching him any more than they have to in order to torture him with not-enough._

_It’s all made better by the way the blunt head of his cock nudges up at his throbbing cunt, replacing the hands, and Tobirama tries to sink down on it, tries to impale himself on that length, but Madara is strong and his grip is firm. He’s not going anywhere until his alpha decides he can._

_Madara’s snarl is sharp and sudden, hands leaving his sex so that they can settle on his hips, bruising-tight and utterly punishing. Tobirama loves it. “You do, don’t you, my lovely?”_

_He hisses, wriggling. “Obviously, obviously, get a move on—”_

_The sound of his mate’s laughter chases him into the darkness._

The first thing that registers in Tobirama’s fever-baked mind after the arousal finally abates is the softness. Ensconcing him in a cocoon of warmth and comfort is a thick pallet of what appears to be fur, the indescribable plush embrace of innumerable animal pelts a wonderfully welcome sensation in contrast to the aching soreness of his entire body.

The ebbing tide of irrepressible need is not gone altogether – he’ll still be hot and irritated for another twelve hours after his heat truly ends – but it is the shore of a shallow sea lapping at his nerve endings instead of a tsunami flooding violently through him in a burning surge of unwanted excitement.

Tobirama tosses his head back into the fur pallet and sighs, relieved. He’s never liked heats, never having had a partner with which to make them bearable instead of agonizing. To know that this one in particular has mostly reached its conclusion is an enormous weight off of his shoulders.

There’s a vaguely familiar scent in the air, spicy and dark, but it’s soothing, comforting, not inflammatory, and Tobirama doesn’t question its presence as he slips his eyes shut with a sigh and begins to drift back off to sleep. No one save for Hashirama, Tōka, and Mito can register as _safe_ to his half-aware, paranoia-riddled senses, and none of them would ever dream of harming him.

…There’s something else he should be remembering, but damn it if he can recall it at the moment.

He snuggles back into the heavenly layers of pelts brushing against his bare skin and sinks back into unconsciousness.

He wakes an unknown amount of time later to the touch of a blazing-bright chakra signature that has absolutely _no business_ being within five leagues of his shelter, let alone _inside it,_ but he’s given no time to process that before the Uchiha bastard notices he’s up and immediately starts bitching at him.

At the first sound of Madara’s voice, Tobirama bolts upright, heart thundering in his chest. He’s only just finished a heat, he’s exhausted and starving and dehydrated and _weak,_ he couldn’t possibly hope to stand a chance against the Uchiha Clan Head in his current state—

—but Madara isn’t attacking him, isn’t threatening him, isn’t even _looking_ at him. He’s sitting in front of a generously sized fire, having carved a hole into the roof of Tobirama’s shelter so that its smoke wouldn’t suffocate the two of them, watching a thick slab of bloody meat as it cooks on a turning spit.

“You’re up,” he says without tearing his eyes away from where he’s apparently decided to make himself dinner. “Good. For a while there I thought you might never regain lucidity, given all the yowling and begging and various other hideous noises that you make while in heat.”

Tobirama’s face burns in a severe blush, cheeks catching fire as he realizes that there’s no burning soreness in his loins like there would be if he’d been properly fucked, but the mortification is easy to suppress. He needs to be focused. Madara is facing away from him – this is his _chance._

There’s a carcass not far from where Uchiha is crouched before his fire, a bloodied kunai left on the ground beside it.

He tsks. _Careless._ He hadn’t thought Madara stupid enough to not secure his weapons around an enemy, but it’s to his benefit, so he won’t question it. Rolling silently to his feet, he stalks towards the carcass, and his fingers are centimeters from the hilt of the blade, and it’s _in his hand,_ and in a flash he’s on the alpha, plunging the knife into his gut—

—or so he would have if Madara hadn’t suddenly grabbed him by the wrist with a vicious strength and disarmed him with a single powerful shake, fingers clenching so tight around his arm that Tobirama is forced to drop the kunai before Madara breaks his bones in retaliation.

“Tsk, tsk, Senju,” he scolds, still not looking away from his fucking roast. _“Careless._ You should know better than to think I’d leave weapons out around an unarmed hostile, and you should know better than to think I’d be so easily killed.”

Tobirama hisses, half in revulsion and half in pain as the hand twists ever so slightly, his ulna and radius creaking audibly in protest. “Let _go_ of me, bastard, and maybe I won’t cut your throat open in my gratitude.”

“Lie,” Madara counters flatly, finally turning to look at him, and his eyes are a deep, shiny onyx, that mother _fucker_ doesn’t even think Tobirama to be threatening enough for the activation of his Sharingan- “You would murder me in an instant if I gave you the opportunity and we both know it. Unfortunately for you, I don’t intend to give you the opportunity, so you’re just going to have to sit back and eat and replenish your strength and give me some _explanations.”_

Tobirama bristles, yanking his wrist out of the man’s grip and rubbing at the developing bruise on his forearm. He doesn’t have a response for that, the razor’s edge of his sword-sharp tongue dulled from the influence of his heat, and…

He _is_ awfully hungry. The haunch Madara has roasting on its spit is dripping grease and hot juices, and just being this close to it is enough to fill his nose with its delectable peppery scent.

“Fine, then,” he snaps, stalking around the fire so that he and Madara are on opposite sides, glaring at him through the flames. “If I give you what _explanations_ you want from me, I want your guarantee that you’ll leave me _alone.”_

The alpha stares at him with inscrutable dark eyes, quirking his brows. “So we have a deal?”

Tobirama folds his hands over his exposed sex, noting Madara’s blush and narrowing his eyes. “We do.”

They have much to discuss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there will be some actual interaction following this i just wanted it to be from madara's pov so we can get him being distressed and horny 😳


	7. MADARA II

The jūinjutsu barrier glitters gold in the wetness of the night, cursed sealing script glowing across its surface. It’s stretched like a spiderweb between the trees ringing the mouth of the heat-den, an enormous swathe of delicate chakrawork strong enough to sap the life energy from any being so unfortunate as to be caught within its field.

Madara glares at it, Sharingan traveling over the corpses of the samurai trapped in its hold like flies caught in amber. There’s _no way_ the Senju bastard managed to cast such a complicated, powerful jutsu while in the midst of his _heat,_ but there’s no one else skilled enough with seals to have erected the barrier, and it’s obviously intended to protect the area shielded within – very clearly a makeshift heat-den – from all comers.

He runs gloved fingers over the golden lines of seal-script engraved in the bark of a nearby pine, careful not to actually touch it lest he meet the same gruesome fate as the Shogun’s soldiers. There has to be a fault _somewhere._ Had Tobirama been fully lucid and prepared and also not naked and alone in the forest in the middle of his estrous cycle, Madara would have full faith in the integrity of his barrier, but as it is, he’s not, and there must be a weakness.

That’s the problem, though. He doesn’t know enough about fūinjutsu, let alone cursed seals, to be capable of safely finding and exploiting the chinks in its armor.

The raw strength of Senju’s chakra is no small issue – he would make such an _excellent_ mate, so fertile and attractive and fierce, fully capable of protecting what beautiful little pups he’ll surely bear Madara – and his Clan can’t afford to lose him because he was stupid enough to take his chances with what could amount to an overly intricate _bomb._

Madara _has_ met the man. He wouldn’t put it past him to work some kind of backfire mechanism into the barrier meant to utterly obliterate everything outside of the protected stretch of land.

Gods, but isn’t he fortunate that he wasted all that time in the windowsill, crouched into a tiny ball with an unwelcome erection and doing his level best to convince himself that he’s _better_ than taking advantage of a heat-sick omega, even one who is his enemy.

(Actually, _especially_ one who is his enemy, and this omega in particular.

If Madara so much as _thought_ about defiling Hashirama’s precious baby brother, he’d meet a grisly, violent death.)

Had he been unlucky enough to wander across the jūinjutsu barrier before anyone else, it’s entirely possible that he, unaware as he would have been of the consequences of coming into contact with it, would have been trapped within its hold instead of the Shogun’s samurai.

The smartest thing to do would be to wait and pray that the sealing barrier will grow weaker with time until it’s relatively safe to interfere with, but for all that Madara is a genius, he’s never really had a good head on his shoulders.

He hurls his gunbai at the wall of energy gleaming golden in the darkness and it shatters beneath the force of the blow like springtime ice, dissolving into thin air as the samurai’s bodies fall to the ground, no longer suspended in the sky by what force had taken their lives. With a crack and a whine, the chakra traps deactivate, and it’s only after the barrier is completely destroyed that he realizes his mistake.

The jūinjutsu was very likely the only thing protecting this place from outside interference, and without it sealing the sensations of Tobirama’s heat inside its field of protection, his accumulated heat-scent rolls through the air in immensely powerful waves that have Madara fully hard and sweating like a hog for the slaughter in under a second.

It’ll be an attractive beacon to any virile alpha within a league and a half – Madara included, since he _is_ capable of acknowledging blatantly obvious truths, and the blatantly obvious truth right in front of his face is that he finds the Senju heir _exceedingly_ attractive – and writhing helplessly at its center is Tobirama, unable to defend himself, perfect and gorgeous and in such real danger that Madara feels physical revulsion at the idea of simply abandoning him to be assaulted.

With a curse he settles himself in front of the cave mouth, praying that exposure to Tobirama’s heat-scent will lessen the potency of the biological effects it triggers in his body, clinging to his gunbai with gloved hands and watching the surrounding darkness like a red-eyed hawk.

Madara likes to consider himself something of a scion of self-control. He’s the Head of his prestigious Clan, a legendary shinobi in his own right, and although he may be an alpha, he knows how to keep his instincts under control. It would take the ultimate temptation to bend his steely will; there are few things on the face of the planet potent enough in nature to get him to drop his composure.

That being said.

Those fucking _noises._

Madara grits his teeth and tightens his fists around the handle of his gunbai so that he doesn’t reach down for his cock. He’s only known Tobirama is an omega for hardly a few hours, but these past hours have been the longest and most agonizing he’s ever had the displeasure of forcing himself to live through. Now that Madara’s noticed him in the capacity of _bitch,_ noticed him as _potential mate,_ become aware of him as _omega-Tobirama,_ he can’t fucking _stop_ doing so; every memory he has of the Senju is juxtaposed against that first image of him spread-legged over Minamoto’s corpse, stuffed so full of cock and knot that he can’t keep himself from panting, teeth stained gory red with civilian lifeblood.

He doubts that he could conjure a more attractive scenario given he had years to come up with one, and he’s – imaginative.

Unfortunate, now, since Tobirama, that motherfucker, is apparently masturbating to the idea of them having sex and being rather loud about it, too. He doesn’t have to _think_ about what kind of noises he’d make when fingering himself open, when playing with his cock, because he can _hear_ them, and being flayed alive would be less torturous.

The smell of the storm is thick in the air and Tobirama’s heat-scent is overwhelmingly powerful, but it’s not long at all before Madara’s other senses register a presence, _multiple_ presences, unmistakably approaching the heat-den, no doubt drawn there by the magnetizing scent of sea salt and fresh omega slick and – _oh._

 _That’s_ what had been familiar, the first time he’d smelled it. Caramel is a rare luxury, all but extinct in the Fire Country wartime. Madara had last enjoyed it as a teenager, having received some as part of a payment by a rich Water Country merchant and having brought it back home to share with Izuna. The memory of a delicate treat, a mouth-watering decadence, a sticky sweetness so utterly inaccessible that simply desiring it is just torture – that’s what Madara had recognized in Tobirama’s heat-scent.

It just fucking figures that the bastard smells exactly like his favorite spices and desserts and scents all wrapped into one. It seems almost _unfair,_ really – perhaps there is some malicious god out there rooting for his demise, orchestrating his doom by making Senju Tobirama the most unbelievably delicious omega Madara has ever had the misfortune of meeting face-to-face.

They _aren’t_ mates – whatever the momentary delusions Madara had entertained in the seconds immediately following the reveal of Tobirama’s true dynamic aren’t real. He can admit that much, and they very well might never be, but it is his duty as Hashirama’s friend and a Clan Head and a decent fucking human to protect the omega for the remainder of his heat, torturous as that will be. Very likely Madara will even escort him safely back to Fire Country, since he’ll be exhausted and left listless by recovery in the days immediately after its conclusion.

(Perhaps then he can capitalize on the chance to get to know Tobirama better, to store up as many Sharingan memories as possible of those sacred red eyes, to commit to heart the sophisticated structure of his lovely face…)

All he can do now is wait for the enemies to come to him.


	8. MADARA III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special treats and the answer to a spoilery question of your choice to the person who guesses which canon ninja the dude who attacks madara is! hint: it's really not that hard lmao
> 
> edit: yeah lmao several people guessed it it’s ya man mu

His chakra-sense detects nothing but Tobirama’s presence and the latent energy of the forest, and he doesn’t realize he’s been cornered until it’s already happened.

“You, alpha,” a voice calls, sonorous and utterly toneless. “Get away from there.”

There is no scent in the air but Tobirama’s slick, nothing in his field of vision but the trees and the underbrush, nothing at all to indicate the presence of another shinobi but the sound of the man’s voice. It’s more than a little unsettling, but Madara is guarding something deeply precious and incredibly vulnerable; he cannot allow disturbance to overcome him now.

“Fuck off,” he responds, gloved fists tightening around the handle of his gunbai. “Fuck off and mind your own business or _force_ me to move, you coward.”

The shadows rustle, but not even his Sharingan detects anything more than the shiver of bushes displaced by something moving at an intimidating speed, very likely fast enough to rival even Tobirama. Madara growls and scans the forest around him – the voice had come from ground level, and he would notice if there was something as heavy as a person in the trees above him.

Except for the part where he apparently does not.

The shinobi is on him in an instant, launching himself out of a nearby pine and giving him no time to react. Only an aborted coil of smoke escapes Madara’s mouth before there’s a razor-sharp kunai digging into the soft skin of his throat. He can’t see his assailant, but cloth-wrapped fingers twist his arms behind his back with incredible crushing force, and although he’s undoubtedly stronger, the stranger could easily sever his carotid artery in the time that it would take for him to break free.

“What do you want with this omega,” the ninja demands, his knife drawing blood. Madara thinks he’s a beta, but he has no scent whatsoever, and it’s impossible to actually tell. “Why are you stalking around their heat-den? What foul designs do you have on this person?”

…Oh. That’s – unexpected, but he can work with this. The shinobi must have caught wind of heat-scent, followed the trail, and then noticed Madara, a single alpha, crouched at the mouth of Tobirama’s cave in what is an admittedly suspicious position.

He’s not particularly inclined to be gracious and respectful when there’s an enemy holding him hostage at knifepoint, but his intentions are nothing but pure, and if this shinobi is remotely smart, he’ll be able to tell that Madara is telling the truth.

“I’m protecting him,” he grits out, hissing as the kunai cuts deeper into his throat, the blade coming to rest against his windpipe. Not yet a fatal wound, not even really serious, but it could become deadly in an instant should the shinobi choose to kill him. “You see those runes carved into the trees? The seal-script?”

They’re still glowing with a faint gold, the dense chakra dispersing slowly into the surrounding air, creating a haze of energy that fogs up Madara’s senses.

“Yes. A trap of some sort?”

“Essentially, but it’s not mine. To- the omega set up a jūinjutsu barrier to protect himself from anyone who might happen to come across his heat-den before he’s lucid enough to defend himself, and I broke through it before I realized what I was doing. I was chasing him down because he’d murdered my client—”

“You were attracted to him,” the ninja says dryly. “You still are. I can smell your arousal.”

“—and _perhaps_ I was _maybe_ a little bit interested, but only a little bit, and I’m not the kind of knothead alpha who—”

“…who hunts down a vulnerable omega in the middle of a storm in the dark of the night, destroys his shields and safeguards, and then perches like a spider on the hunt outside of his den to spurn all comers?”

Madara grumbles an insult under his breath, but he stops complaining quickly enough when the shinobi puts more pressure on the kunai at his throat. “Yeah, it sounds suspicious when you put it like _that,_ but I swear on the honor of my Clan, the Uchiha, that I have no intentions of assaulting him. I erred in shattering his barrier and it’s now my responsibility to protect him in the wake of that.”

That actually gets the stranger to draw his knife away, and the hands clamping around his arms with an unforgiving grip release him. In half a moment there’s a person materializing in front of him, a strange, slender man wrapped head to toe in bandages, only his eyes and his nose visible. There’s a sword beneath Madara’s chin before he can think – what is _with_ all these goddamn foes and their fucking _speed?_ – but the shinobi’s demeanor is not half as hostile as it was only a moment ago.

“Your people consider rape a capital offense,” the ninja says, colorless gray eyes glittering in the darkness. “To take advantage of an omega in heat is to cast aside all moral and ethical code for momentary pleasure had at the expense of another person’s autonomy, and it is a crime no true Uchiha would ever forgive, let alone commit.”

Madara allows himself to sigh through his nose, a soft puff of air releasing the tension that had built up in his chest. “Yes. He’s – this one is special, too. His anija is like a brother to me, and although our circumstances do not allow for cordial interaction, it is my duty to keep him safe, and not just because I’m the idiot who broke through his defenses.”

“You _are_ attracted to him, though, and not just because he’s in heat. You would like to mate him.”

He huffs, ignoring the blush that burns across his cheeks. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. Are you going to stop pointing weapons at me anytime soon or are you not quite done with your interrogation?”

With a quirk of an eyebrow, the enemy shinobi withdraws his sword, sheathing it noiselessly and rising to his feet with the light, effortless grace of a predator. “Very well. I believe that you are sincere in your motives and in your actions. If you plan on abandoning him once his heat ends, I would remind you that he won’t fully recover from such an ordeal for another few days, and warn you that it would be prudent of you to assist him in getting home. I’m sure his brother would be immensely grateful.”

Madara stands as well, rubbing at the cut across his throat with a gloved hand and glaring down at the strange ninja who completely lacks a presence. “Fine, fine. Any other advice for me, O Wise One, or can you mind your own business and _go_ already?”

From within his bandages, the man procures several mid-sized storage scrolls, sealed with ribbon. “Supplies for your journey. You do not appear to be remotely prepared, and for some reason I doubt your unlucky companion has clothes with him. I took these scrolls off of some merchants I encountered en route to this clearing – you’re welcome for disposing of them, by the way – and they contain a variety of goods that should see you through a trip of considerable length. I know that there is a plethora of furs within the storage seals, and fresh meat and vegetables as well, and also all of the clothing and weapons I removed from the caravan. They will serve you more than they will serve me, and I have already completed what business I had in these parts.”

His first instinct is to be an asshole, but – this man is genuinely helpful, and he’d only been concerned for Tobirama’s safety, even if he took it out on Madara. He forces his pride down and dips his head in a bow, planting his gunbai in the muddy ground beneath him. “You didn’t have to do this.”

The ninja stares at him with inscrutable pale eyes. “No, I didn’t.”

Madara feels his temper flare, but he quashes it ruthlessly and remains calm. “So why have you?”

The bandages covering the shinobi’s mouth warp, and he’s left with the distinct impression of a sly smile. “I have a feeling that this is not the last time we will meet, Uchiha. Do share these supplies with your omega, and be careful in how you interact with him. Perhaps caring for him will earn you his favor.”

With that, the man vanishes into the darkness of the night, the only indicator of his presence the scrolls in Madara’s hands and the sluggish drip-drip-drip of blood down his collarbones.

 

\--

 

Mere hours before Tobirama wakes, a day and a half after that confrontation with the bandaged man, Madara begins to prepare them a meal, a choice cut of venison sliced from the haunch of a rather unfortunate deer who made the fatal mistake of surprising him while armed, a slab of meat that he rubs in the salt and pepper and onion powder he’d pilfered from the strange shinobi’s scrolls before hanging it on a spit over the fire he’d started to keep them warm and dry. When Izuna finishes heats, he’s always starving and dehydrated and exhausted, craving sugar and protein like he craves air, and although he has no guarantee that Tobirama will be the same, it can’t hurt to force some food back into him. He’s got a gorgeous body, of course, but he’s far too skinny. He’d be even prettier if he wasn’t so bony.

(Perhaps somewhere along the line Madara could fatten him up with their pups, fill his belly up with seed and watch as he grows round with child. _That’s_ an excellent idea if he’s ever thought of one. Mm, a pregnant Tobirama…the mere concept is irresistible. He’s in _such_ trouble.)

He’s had no challengers since that odd man covered in bandages, and he’s left with the sneaking suspicion that the ninja _disposed_ of all indecent comers before heading to confront Madara. Convenient, really, since he wasn’t particularly looking forward to having to fight off everyone with a working nose, but some primal, feral part of him is still disgruntled that he has no corpses to sling at Tobirama’s feet, no proof of his prowess in battle and competence as a suitor.

…He is _not_ overcome by his instincts. He’s _not._ There’s no harm at all in finding another individual attractive and attempting to impress them. He is in no way influenced by the raging flood of hormones controlling his fickle hindbrain.

He’s almost managed to actually convince himself that it’s true by the time Tobirama’s chakra flickers and flares, and he braces himself for the coming storm that will surely hit him when the omega notices his scent.

Nothing happens, though, and a soft sigh emerges from the thick pile of furs he’d wrapped his delirious companion in before the chakra goes dormant once more.

It's incentive enough for Madara to drop his guard, and he drifts off into his daydreams, only barely managing to catch the knife that comes flying at his stomach before he's stabbed.


	9. TOBIRAMA IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise this didn't mean to turn out as it did but i think it's actually p good so. Sorry Tobes Sorry Mads. there can be no happiness without suffering first.
> 
> mentions of underage, forced marriage + pregnancy, rape and non-consensual touching and looking, etc but it doesnt actually happen and its Not between madatobi. this is more flashbacks bc i am a whore for tragic backstory

Madara’s interrogation begins – _interestingly_.

They’ve finished eating and cleaning up after themselves, and Uchiha, apparently armed with an entirely unreasonable amount of supplies and goods, had been kind enough to lend him some clothes he’d had in a partially unfurled storage scroll that he hadn’t noticed earlier. The yukata doesn’t fit terribly well – too loose and too short, slipping off his shoulders and riding up his thighs, and he doesn’t fail to notice the way Madara’s eyes are drawn to the flexing muscles of his tattooed legs – but it’s better than being fully naked in front of his most famous enemy, so he forces himself to accept it.

“So,” Madara says, lounging on the cave floor, tending to his gunbai and only looking up to gaze at where Tobirama’s sex is now covered by fabric. “Are we going to discuss the fact that you spent your heat fantasizing about me knotting and breeding and claiming you, or is that too much for your delicate sensitivities?”

_Madara smiling softly at him, gently running a reverent hand over the bulging curve of his belly. Tobirama leaning into the touch with a satisfied purr, shifting slightly when their pup kicks at his ribcage with a shocking strength she must have inherited from her wonderful father._

_“Oh, my beloved,” he rumbles, alpha scent thickening with arousal as his Sharingan activates. “So gorgeous…I didn’t think you could get any sexier, but I was wrong, so wrong…”_

Tobirama does not blush. He is a war veteran and a Clan heir and a blooded assassin and he _does not blush._ “I’m so terribly sorry to hear that you’ve been experiencing hallucinations, Uchiha. Perhaps I ought to go ahead and put you out of your misery so that you don’t have to languish in your delusions for long.”

Madara snorts, smoke drifting out of his nostrils, Katon chakra flaring. “So remarkably benevolent, even to lowly Uchiha scum like myself. Truly, how _does_ one resist your charms, Senju? Please tell me. I think I’m falling in love.”

_“I love you, I love you, I love you,” his mate whispers into his collarbones, pressing worshipful kisses to his developing breasts. “I don’t know how we could have ever hated each other.”_

_“I_ think you’re full of bullshit,” Tobirama declares, ruthlessly squashing all impossible fantasies of an alpha like Madara fathering his pups, of ever getting the chance to bear pups in the first place. “Are you going to attempt to get information out of me while I’m still in a generous mood or are you going to spend the entire time trying to outwit me in a pathetic show of incompetence? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Mm. No, I thought I’d waste this opportunity trying to court you, just so that I do actually get the chance to shove my knot in that frigid, spiny cunt of yours. You’d better appreciate it, too, because the gods know no one else will ever want to touch you like that.”

_“You don’t get a choice in who breeds you, brat,” Butsuma roars, dragging him up by the front of his shirt and wringing him like a doll. “You’re lucky enough to have even one viable suitor, given your deformations, and so help me Sage, if you ever pass your albinism to what pups you **will** bear what alpha I select for you, I’ll skin them living and leave you to bury their miserable malformed bodies.”_

Before he’s thinking, he’s moving, lunging across the cave, Madara’s nose crunching and giving beneath his fist, incandescent in his fury. The words trigger some feral rage response deep within him, and distantly he recalls that meeting he’d had with Father just before he’d killed him, the one where he’d been stripped and paraded in front of an entire row of grown alphas, the youngest of them over a decade older than he had been at the time.

_“Present yourself, Tobirama,” Butsuma snaps, spinning him around to face away from his suitors and forcing him to his knees. “Go on. Face to the floor, ass in the air. Be a good bitch and show them what you’ve got.”_

_Tobirama can do nothing but obey, pressing his cheek to the tatami mats and spreading his legs so that the alphas can get a good look at his sex._

_“He’s pretty, Butsuma-sama,” one of them says, and he blushes in humiliation, trying to quash his revulsion. “Look at that pussy. Perfect for knotting. You say he is fertile, correct?”_

_Father snorts. “Trust me, Tatsumi, he’ll give you good, strong pups. Plenty of them, and he’ll be quick about it too. His mothers were just the same, excellent at birthing, even if they weren’t as productive as I would have hoped they’d be. You’ll get more than four, though, I can promise you that. He should be good for at least six or seven, probably more if you start breeding him early enough.”_

_There’s a tittering of approval from behind him, tongues clicking in consideration, scents changing in arousal. The heat of their eyes on his naked body is scorching, Butsuma’s glare burning the worst._

_He closes his eyes and refuses to cry. Hashirama will be Clan Head soon, and Hashirama would die violently before selling him off like a prized broodmare. Still the shame floods through him, and there are coos of adoration._

_“Look at how he blushes! Oh, you’ve really made the perfect bitch, Butsuma-sama. Flawless in everything but that regrettable mutation making him so pale.”_

_“Mm. If any of the pups inherit his condition, you can dispose of them. We don’t need his weakness spreading.” A short, harsh laugh, and then: “Of course, no one would dare to claim him and then fill him with substandard bastards. He’s much too valuable an asset for us to waste his pregnancies on more albinos.”_

_There’s an awkward silence. The scent of arousal abates, and there are several doubtful murmurs._

_Alphas Father chose specifically for him, at least a dozen of them, and he’s so totally repulsive that not even they want him._

He comes back to himself to discover that he’s got Madara’s throat trapped beneath his hands, that Uchiha’s face is flushed a breathless indigo, that he’s decidedly more injured than Tobirama remembers him being just half a minute ago.

“I – _stop,_ Senju, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, just – let me _go…”_

An alpha who was exposed to him in his heat, and he’s so totally repulsive that he didn’t even touch him. It’s entirely possible that he was never even tempted in the first place.

The strength bleeds out of him suddenly, and he’s backing up, casting his eyes away from the bruises forming on Madara’s neck, swallowing down the mortification. He’s better than letting emotion overcome him like that. He’s better than allowing his past to haunt him.

(Sage knows that Butsuma trained him until he was.)

Tobirama stares at where Madara is coughing and wheezing and clutching at his windpipe, collapsed on the floor of the cave. Hashirama’s best friend, the man he would abandon his own kin for, and Tobirama nearly killed him.

He would have deserved it.

Tobirama stalks over to his writhing body and presses a heel into the small of his back, grinding down until he can feel Madara’s vertebrae protesting. “Now. I believe you had some questions? Let’s get this over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is pretty short but still full of content i think! please remember that comments are literally the best thing you can do to make chapters happen faster and be of higher quality when they are posted. i really do treasure them yall


	10. MADARA IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehehohoho,......wrote almost this entire thing in like 3 hours so forgive me if it's trash but i'm in the mood for trash apparently

Contrary to what certain unnamed bratty little brothers might have to say on the matter, Madara is actually self-aware enough to realize that his immediate reaction to being trapped and vulnerable at the questionable mercy of Senju Tobirama should not be arousal.

This realization does little to help him overcome the heat that sparks in the pit of his stomach as Tobirama’s cold, slender fingers run down the length of his body, divesting him of armor and weapons. It does little to keep his attention off of the warmth of another person so close to him or the lingering summer-storm smell of his heat. It does not make it easy to tear his eyes away from the sleek musculature of his warrior’s frame. It does not prevent his mouth from watering every time he breathes in that impossibly attractive scent.

Tobirama doesn’t meet his eyes, no fool even with Madara immobilized before him, but his glare is just direct enough to give him the impression of cardinal irises, delicate white eyelashes long enough to brush his cheeks when he blinks. Has he always had such beautiful eyes, sacred, bloody red and irresistibly gorgeous?

Madara forces himself to tear his gaze away from Tobirama’s face. He’s no fool, but any attempt to make eye contact may be interpreted as an attack, for reasons that are - understandable.

Despite this, there’s still the sour churn of frustrated regret in the pit of his stomach, a nebulous anger directed at generations past. In an ideal world Tobirama would never let himself be hunted like a prey animal, not even for the sake of a partnership, but in this world Madara isn’t even allowed to  _ try. _ Disregarding the fact that it’s  _ high treason _ and his status as Clan Head won’t save him from execution so much as it will carve his name into the tantō that will kill him and cast the shadow of suspicion onto all of his precious people, his unwise decisions hurting them even in death, he’s the White Demon of the Senju. He would  _ murder _ Madara for the insult of assuming that he can just be courted like he’s any other bitch, like he isn’t a divine omega sent to earth by Amaterasu to cause Madara specifically relentless suffering, and that should  _ not _ excite him as much as it does, damn it.

Fuck, fuck, Tobirama’s looking at him, silvery eyebrow arched. Even after the conclusion of his three days of heat, he won’t regain lucidity in full for anywhere from another twenty-four hours to half a week at worst, but he won’t  _ need _ to be lucid in full to notice Madara, unbelievably  _ stupid _ as he is, hardening at the lightest of touches, scent growing stronger, smoky and suffocating, and the gods know he won’t just  _ forgive _ that. Madara is thick sometimes, shortsighted in a way that has nothing to do with the deteriorating burn of his Mangekyō, but there is no remote possibility of Tobirama smirking at his helpless arousal, clever, calloused fingers nimble against bare skin—

A stray thought about how their kekkei genkai would combine and manifest in their pup has his mind flickering to Mokuton and then to Hashirama, relief twofold. The slightest memory of his broad smile has his arousal dying in moments, which is  _ good. _ Madara hangs onto that image, that sunny, sadistic grin; Hashirama is far from enticing at the best of times, and he needs to keep his focus on the fact that even knowing Tobirama’s true dynamic is more than likely a capital crime in that crazy bastard’s teary eyes, and that any attempt at intimacy would have his corpse impaled on roots in seconds, given that his death isn’t drawn out with the reasoning that a fast end would be far too merciful for anyone who’s dreamt of laying claim to that precious baby brother of his.

“Uchiha,” Tobirama snaps, voice dripping with venom. Fuck but he’s lovely, all lean, livid, logical lethality, his eyes like lifeblood and lava.

Madara wants to smother himself in the sensations of this man. He’s glorious, ruthless, a deity of the rapture more than anything approaching mortal, but more importantly he’s  _ annoyed, _ annoyed and armed with everything Madara brought on this mission that could conceivably function as a weapon and some things that couldn’t, but he’s not naive enough to think that they aren’t still dangerous in those slender assassin’s hands.

_ “Uchiha,” _ Tobirama repeats, losing his patience. “Are you ever going to get on with whatever the hell you wanted to interrogate me about or are you going to stare at me until we’re fossilized?”

“I,” Madara says, because he is intelligent and eloquent and flustered beyond what should be possible. “What?”

Pale, icy fingers tighten around the handle of his gunbai, the tendons of his arm flexing. He probably doesn’t know how to wield it with any degree of skill, but that doesn’t make his possession of the fan any less fatal.

The White Demon is soulless, a wraith made for war and nothing else, a shell of a person who could never be anything more than a weapon. According to legend he’s just a malicious spirit given flesh, a Senju oni permitted to assume physical form for the sheer value of his prowess in combat.

He’s also oddly innocent, expression crumpling in confusion when Madara doesn’t tense at the kiss of sharp steel against his throat.

He doesn’t want to die, not by any means, but if this is to be his fate, if the ghostly Senju before him is his doom - well. There have been worse ways to end a life.

“You,” Tobirama starts, and then stops, frowning at Madara’s calm. “Why—”

The tug of that pout has sleepy synapses snapping to attention, neurons firing, and suddenly he’s back in control of himself, the lingering heat-scent still attractive but no longer overwhelming. When he looks at his captor he sees  _ enemy _ alongside  _ omega, _ and whatever fog that’s been clouding his mind in the recent past is lifted.

Stupid, stupid,  _ stupid.  _ Madara should really go back on scent-blockers if he’s not mature enough to keep his cool because of a pretty face and an alluring smell.

He shouldn’t have reacted the way he did, instinct and no insight, but he’s still breathing, and if Tobirama is caught off-guard, there’s a chance that he can stay that way.

It’s his turn to talk. Anticipation is evident in every rigid line of Tobirama’s body; he’ll need to choose his words carefully.

“You haven’t killed me,” Madara says, because that morbid curiosity has been tugging at his brain stem since he lost the upper hand. “You’re a genius, Senju, and you know that if you don’t silence me while you can, your secret is ruined. You know that I could ruin you with this. You know that this could change your entire life, and you haven’t killed me, even though you’ve had plenty of opportunities to do so by now.”

Tobirama’s scowl deepens, but he doesn’t put any more pressure on the kunai at his jugular, and there’s something frenzied and feral in his eyes.

The White Demon is soulless, and his greatest enemy knows his one vulnerability, and Madara’s still alive.

Objectively he knew that Tobirama’s blind devotion to his elder brother means that it’s unlikely that he’s really a rabid, warmongering cur, but he’s never shown any sign of mercy, never once implied that he is open to a future where the Uchiha aren’t extinct.

Not until now.

If the rumors were true Madara would have died already. If the rumors were true he wouldn’t have bothered with playing warden as he is now. If the rumors were true, and he’s starting to understand that they very much  _ aren’t, _ not entirely, not exclusively…

Tobirama lost his little brothers just as much as Hashirama did, and he had no Uchiha to show him that the enemy is human. There was no one who could teach him that  _ both _ of their Clans are just tired of the war, the fighting, the dying, tired of sending children to the Pure Lands as their corpses disintegrate in too-small funerary pyres, tired of loss and pain with no rest, no peace, no victory, no  _ point. _

Senju Itama was an omega. Hashirama never explicitly told him, but bloodline thieves almost always target bitches, easier to control if less efficient as a means of creating children with kekkei genkai due to the demands and risk of pregnancy. Bloodline thieves  _ are _ soulless, and a seven-year-old omega of Senju descent is a budding Mokuton womb waiting to flower, not a promising iryō-nin or a gentle smile or someone’s precious person. Itama was lucky, all told. He bit back hard enough that the kekkei genkai hunters were forced to engage in combat, and in that battle he received wounds severe enough to kill him. He died in his home with his family by his side, mindless on painkillers, stolen away too soon.

It’s still a kinder fate than what he would have known if he’d  _ lost. _

(That’s how they lost Shōto, too, and on his deathbed he’d laughed with blood staining his teeth and told them that he was privileged enough to choose the way he’d die, and that he would rather be cremated before double-digits if it meant freedom from the eyestealers who had noted his scent and his heritage and almost succeeded. There are fates worse than death, but there is  _ nothing  _ worse than a lifetime as a bloodline broodmare.)

Senju Tobirama is also an omega, a man with filial devotion woven into the core of who he is, and he would have buried his brother with a neutral expression and the knowledge that the world is cruel and unforgiving, that he is by virtue of his dynamic far from an apex predator despite his indomitable ferocity, that no amount of skill or competence will soothe the ugly burn of truth.

Senju Tobirama is an omega, and Madara knows this, and he knows Madara knows this, and when the gaps in his reasoning are laid bare, his knuckles blanch white with the strength of his grip on his kunai. He draws the weapon away and slips it into the wrappings on his thigh.

It’s not a declaration, not anything but a stiff acknowledgement of the circumstances, but he looks different somehow when he closes his eyes and breathes, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Madara is struck by the sudden sensation that Tobirama has changed somehow, that something has shifted, something  _ important, _ and he doesn’t know what or why or how.

He knows his own Clan, knows that Izuna picks up his sword because of years-old grief searing in his heart and the need to keep their family safe. He knows that the elders have been arguing for weeks about a ceasefire, tangled up in politics and reputations and potential repercussions, so exhausted by the damn war that they are willing to ignore their pride and every known precedent for the chance that peace will save the Uchiha. He knows that Hikaku talks in his sleep, that he believes in the sincerity of Senju Hashirama’s very loud compassion, that he would consider defecting if he didn’t have his duties.

He knows that he would do the same if it weren’t impossible.

He knows Hashirama, too, knows that there is irrevocable kindness embedded in his bone marrow, knows that he is almost incapable of being anything but completely, wholly honest, blunt to the extent that he gets himself into trouble because he won’t lie, knows that his daughter has red hair and brown eyes and isn’t even a toddler yet, knows that she would already be in conditioning if it weren’t for the protective rage of his harpy wife.

Everything else is a mystery, factors that are dangerously ambiguous in circumstances where ambiguity will cost lives. Senju Tobirama is at the center of this, but he’s more reliable than most, if only because his thoughtless hatred of Uchiha is an established, unshakeable certainty.

Senju Tobirama is frowning, eyes glazed over with concentration, his quicksilver mind working so quickly that Madara is surprised to see that there isn’t steam coming out of his ears. He is a creature of contradictions, alpha and omega, adamantly absolute and painfully unsure, an evil Madara has always believed to be a constant, an evil that he isn’t entirely convinced is real anymore, if it ever was at all.

He is utterly silent as he sorts through Madara’s stolen weapons, sealing them away in some pattern that follows no obvious organizational scheme but is almost definitely the product of years of testing, because he’s the kind of person who would devote time and energy to making sure that his storage solutions are as efficient as possible. He is utterly silent as he straps Madara’s own pack scrolls and that strange ninja’s freight scrolls to the holsters around his waist. He is utterly silent as he slips over to where Madara is hogtied and motionless, and he makes no noise when two light tugs on a knot of mind-bending intricacy unravel the restraints entirely.

Madara is left staring at the uchiwa on the back of the robes he’s borrowed, abandoned to his own devices without so much as a word.

The White Demon is soulless, perhaps. He can’t say if that’s true or not with any real authority, but…

There’s something in him, something foolish and hopeful and helplessly infatuated, and he is increasingly convinced that Senju Tobirama is  _ not. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> madara has been weirdly cooperative wrt the axed mini-arc. we will see if the same is true for tobirama
> 
> not holding out on it


	11. HASHIRAMA II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so. you all may have noticed that it's been a while. and it has! for continuity's sake i'm going to go ahead and scrap what had been in my plans (madara and tobirama make peace and journey home together. this is where they start to reconcile the ancestral blood feud etc) bc it's literally just not coming to me now. that may not be the case later, in which i will go back and fill in the missing chapters, but i just thought it would be best to go ahead and post this and move on with things.
> 
> narratively, what has happened since TOBIRAMA IV: madara gets his ass kicked and maybe has a crush. tobirama is still weak after his heat so madara escorts him to a nearby inn and then kind of stalks him to make sure he gets back to the senju compound alright. tobirama can definitely tell madara is watching him bc he's not making any effort to conceal his presence, and this causes him to have a lot of complicated feelings about a lot of complicated things.
> 
> we are picking up with hashirama being lonely and ill-adjusted and then learning that tobira has come home

Seven days.

An entire week has elapsed since Tobirama vanished. Seven suns have risen and set, seven moons have shone down upon the Senju compound, and Hashirama’s little brother is missing, gone, _stolen_ away from him by something, someone, just like how Itama and Kawarama were stolen from him by the wars. Worse, though, is the knowledge that Hashirama just sat by and _let it happen,_ let his last baby otouto disappear out from under his nose like he’s not the most important thing in the world to him. Disappear, like he’s not Hashirama’s most precious person. Disappear, like he wouldn’t rend apart the earth to bring him back.

Disappear, like he doesn’t _matter,_ like he isn’t the strongest backbone of his administration as Clan Head, damn the elders and what sexist bullshit they say about Tobirama and his dynamic. He may be an omega, but he’s _their_ omega, the strongest omega in all of Fire Country, possibly the strongest in all of the Elemental Countries combined, and to lose him would be – unthinkable.

Hashirama has lost him. The unthinkable has occurred.

Around him, tree boughs warp and scream and twist, driven mad by the violent aura of his Mokuton and becoming scarred, gnarled, nasty works of nature. The vibrant green that used to flush this forest has darkened into a dull, empty blackness, reflective of Hashirama’s dull, empty heart, a heart that has no place in a world without his very last brother.

Sometimes he stands on the edge of the abyss, staring out at his murderous gardens of mutated plants, wondering if he really knows what grief feels like

He doesn’t have to wonder anymore. It claws at his chest like a living thing, weighing down his shoulders and his limbs and his hair. It paralyzes him, freezes his smile on his face, leaving him grinning, hollow, at everything that passes, animate or not. He can’t be bothered to tell the difference anymore.

Tobirama is _gone._

The sorrow is blinding in its intensity, building and building and building on itself with every hour that passes. He’s alone in the forests, lost in his own misery, shrieking and laughing and sobbing uncontrollably.

It occurs to him suddenly that there is every possibility that the cause of Tobirama’s absence is Hashirama himself. He recalls the defiance in his eyes when Hashirama forbade him from accepting that mission from the Shogunate. He recalls the vicious manner in which Tobirama will push at the boundaries of sense, so quick to draw his sword, so eager to break the laws of existence—

(So _very_ like their father, despite everything. After Butsuma’s death, Hashirama had always just assumed that Tobirama would outgrow his brutality and his heartlessness – surely such things were only remnants of Father’s teachings – but he never did, looking back.

He never did.)

—recalls the disobedience Tobirama will hold against him, disobedience that he never managed to muster against Chichi-ue.

Is he simply a failure as a Clan Head, as an alpha? Is he not as good of a brother as he should be, despite his intents being nothing but loving? Did Tobirama – did he just _run away_ to be free of the suffocating embrace of Hashirama’s affections altogether?

_Go away, Anija, I’m working._

_Anija, don’t bother me now, **someone** has to get this paperwork done and **you’re** certainly not the person who’s going to make it happen._

_Anija! Put aside what loyalties continue to tie you to the Uchiha and fight like you care more for our Clan than you do for our enemies!_

His throat convulses around his screaming, but no sound reaches his ears. Around him, the trees thrash and howl, lacing their branches together to form a protective cradle of corrupted greenery that keeps him safe from the world at large.

(Keeps the world at large safe from _him._ )

He doesn’t know how much time he spends there, utterly insensate in his despair. It’s possible that seconds or hours or entire days pass before Tōka fights her way through his shields and physically forces him up. It’s possible that he’s started to put down roots himself by the time she yells at him to get his ass together and get back to the compound, Tobirama is home, he needs help—

“Tobirama is _home?”_ Hashirama whispers, not hearing anything else, voice raw and cracking on every syllable.

Tōka’s hand tightens painfully against his shoulder, but her voice is warm and wet with relief when she speaks. “Yes, Hashirama, he’s back, he’s fine, but—”

He’s back. He’s _fine._

Hashirama collapses to the rotted forest floor in a formal dogeza, murmuring his thanks over and over and over again until the words blur together unrecognizably, tipping his face up to the sun for the first time in far too long and weeping for the gods’ generosity.

“—are you _listening,_ Hashirama?”

“Take me to him,” he rasps, and Tōka frowns, clearly not done talking, but he’s done listening, and she knows that any more words would be wasted on him. “Take me to him, Tōka, let me hold him.”

She relents, guiding him out of the mess he’d made of the forest in his grief, hands trembling and steps swaying and altogether useless in his shock and his relief.

Or. Well. He _is_ until he actually arrives home to his little brother, explodes into the main house with a shout on his lips and gladness bursting in his heart, leaps right through the doors to the sight of a naked Tobirama being fussed at by Mito, and he’s – bleeding?

He’s bleeding, he’s bruised, he’s absolutely _filthy,_ and he reeks of anonymous, indistinct alpha-scent and his own heat.

Hashirama stops dead in his tracks.

— _become the breeding bitch he was always meant to be._

_Do you think that he’ll birth enough children to produce at least one with the Mokuton?_

_He’s such a promising young man, after all. Such a skilled shinobi. I know you despair for him—_

His voice catches in his throat, bile surging up his esophagus. Tobirama meets his eyes, red irises blazing, and it’s only then that his emotionally fraught brain puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

The blue-black handprints on his hips, his throat, his waist. The odd way he’s sitting, so as not to put too much pressure on the wrong spot. The smell of sex and death, clinging to him in a foul miasma.

“Anija,” Tobirama says, voice perfectly even and steely. He holds himself tall and proud despite the strange lean to his posture, the same posture Hashirama has seen Mito wearing after their sessions of lovemaking. There’s a fresh bite mark on the side of his neck, right over his scent-glands. Someone _bit_ Hashirama’s little brother.

He surges forward in a storm of long hair and green robes, knocking Mito to the side without a care for her wellbeing as he presses Tobirama to his chest with such force that the creaking protest of his ribcage is clearly audible. He would wail, would screech and howl and throw a tantrum in the process of demanding to know about what happened, but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to do anything more than cling to his too-thin form, crushing Tobirama’s body into his own like doing so could ensure that he’ll never leave Hashirama’s sight again, sobbing into his brother’s shoulder and smearing mucous all over his dirty, sweaty skin.

He doesn’t have the calmness to speak, doesn’t have the composure to think rationally, doesn’t have the fortitude to do anything more than cry into Tobirama’s bare shoulder.

“Anija,” Tobirama repeats, but his tone softens, and he’s hugging back. “Anija, I’m _alright—”_

“You were _gone,_ Tobirama,” he snaps, and yes, there’s the anger, overwhelming his gratitude in a swelling wave of red. “You were gone and – I thought you fucking _died,_ otouto, you _vanished_ without so much as a note to tell me you were going and we had to assume the worst. We can’t afford to _not_ assume the worst. What the _hell_ were you _thinking?”_

Tobirama stiffens in his grip, and Hashirama pulls back so that he can meet his eyes properly. There’s a strange cageyness to his expression, an odd light in his gaze that he can’t decipher the meaning of.

“Something along the lines of your peace requiring my interference with the Shogunate’s line of succession.”

Hashirama’s blood goes cold. There’s only one thing he could be referring to.

He’d hidden the missive from the Shogunate as well as he could have, but that hadn’t been enough. Tobirama still found it, and he’d been _furious_ with him for turning down a mission of that caliber without bringing it up with his advisors, had been insulted at the implication that Hashirama didn’t think him professional enough to pull off an assassination while in heat, had been betrayed that his silly, stupid, good-for-nothing anija fucked everything up again, even though he was only trying to protect his precious people.

…Tobirama had _sex._ Tobirama left to go on the mission Hashirama _specifically ordered_ him not to take because of its inappropriately intimate nature, and he’d been – _befouled_ by some strange alpha, prince or not, heir or not, and possibly _more than one,_ if the indescribable multitude of scents clinging to his body is at all indicative of what happened to him while he was gone.

The absolute, apoplectic _rage_ that overwhelms him then – he will hate himself for it later. He will look back and be _ashamed_ of himself for losing control over his temper when he knows what he’s capable of, when he _knows_ what kind of treatment Tobirama was forced to endure at the hands of their father. He will slip into his otouto’s room in the dark of the night and crawl into the futon with him, wrapping himself around him like an overly clingy octopus, crying into his sleep yukata and whispering _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ over and over and over again until his throat is raw and sore.

In the moment, he is terrible in his fury.

He latches onto Tobirama’s shoulders with a grip so tight that it bruises his brother’s delicate skin, and the flood of Sage chakra building within him is all but unstoppable. His vision goes green at the edges, and outside he can hear the screeching of the trees ensconcing the Senju main house, driven mad by his unleashed Mokuton.

His voice, when it finally boils out of his throat after what feels like minutes of silence, sounds nothing like him, octaves too deep, rumbling with an anger and a hatred that is entirely alien to him.

 _“Come with me,”_ Hashirama snarls.

Later he will recall the look of wide-eyed terror on Tobirama’s face. Later he will recall the almost imperceptible shiver in his form, one Hashirama hasn’t seen since their father’s death. Later he will understand that his alpha rage triggered something feral and aching in his little brother’s soul, and that his omega hindbrain forced him into compliance.

Later there will be time for regret, time for apologies, because Hashirama is _never letting him go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy ten chapters!! also i am very proud of the parallels drawn between tobirama and butsuma here.......hashirama who knows they're not the same person but still can't help but think of them as dangerously similar......the Emo Tions
> 
> also here’s the link to the madatobi discord server. come and say hi!
> 
> https://discord.gg/nwfweU

**Author's Note:**

> thank yall so much for reading and please don't forget to drop a comment + kudos if you enjoyed it! they mean the world to starving artists
> 
> ok discord is being a bitch so i'm trying this on my laptop,
> 
> yall r probably sick and tired of hearing about it but the madatobi hell discord server is a) exactly what it sounds like b) extremely fun c) full of little snippets and content and headcanons that will more than likely never be officially published not to mention sneaky previews of things that are not yet posted
> 
> it's a cool place and it would be awesome if we had more people!! please lmk if the link is expired or broken etc
> 
> https://discord.gg/q4qMdbD
> 
> also i'm a whore and i would like comments please, sir, i want some more


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